I just finished a week-long tech workshop for the Area 3 Writing Project. What a treat to hang out for five days with 18 enthusiastic teachers, eager to add Web 2.0 tools to their classroom toolkit. For many it was a steep learning curve, but all left with at least one Edublog ready to go. Throughout the week I would periodically suggest that they check out the wealth of tips that the wonderful Sue Waters keeps sending our way via The Edublogger. The post I most often referred them to was 100 Edublogs Themes Separated into Categories .
This morning I’ve added another post and a comment to my list of favorites from The Edublogger:
- Here’s My First Five Tips for Writing Better Blog Posts – From Sue – Once again, Sue puts it all in a nutshell.
- Teacher and Student Blogging that Succeeds – From Dean Shareski (via Jan Smith‘s comment on The Edublogger) – I like how Dean has nailed down some realities about blogging, e.g, ” Blogging is way more about reading than it is writing. Many teachers don’t see this at first.” Lots of food for thought contained in each of the five pointers.
Heading into my workshop wiki to add these three links to my blogging resources.
August 5, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Thank you very much for the instructions as such! I am very new and still finding mw way. Still a little confused!!
August 6, 2008 at 6:03 am
Welcome to the blogosphere, Sheree. I just checked out your blog and see that you too are an Edublogger. You’re going to love this community!
August 6, 2008 at 6:09 am
Sharee,
In case you haven’t noticed, from the Edublogs.org home page, you find excellent video tutorials and a link to The Edublogger (Sue Waters). There is also an in-print Introduction to EB Manual. Hope this help.
August 6, 2008 at 8:03 am
>>Blogging is way more about reading than it is writing. <<
Love this line…yes, I spend more time reading than I do writing.
August 6, 2008 at 9:29 am
Me too, Delaine. And with students, I always try to remind them that far more people will read their posts than will respond. Kind of helps them get past that “talking to an empty room” feeling.
August 6, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Thanks for telling your participants about The Edublogger and glad the posts help others. Dean’s post is excellent and a must read for all educators. It was Jan Smith who shared the link — here is where she blogs. I had read his post prior to her sharing it and had been pondering how I could write a post to encourage readers to check it out.
August 6, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Oops sorry forgot to mention please let me know if there is any topics your participants would like me to cover and want me to cover in more detail on The Edublogger.
August 7, 2008 at 6:01 am
Thanks, Sue, for the info on Jan Smith. I’ve added her link in the post (and enjoyed the side trip to her blog!).
And out of the workshop, here’s a topic question: With the themes that do not include the RSS icon, what’s the best way to add it to the sidebar?
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
August 8, 2008 at 3:10 am
Technically speaking you don’t have to add it to your sidebar for people to be able to subscribe. Feed Readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines are able to locate it from your Blog URL. However some of these less commonly used ones aren’t.
Regardless of whether you have RSS feed already in your sidebar or not I always recommend using Feedburner because that way you have some idea of your readership. However this is probably a topic I would introduce and show them how to create once they are more experienced.
August 8, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I’ve added the RSS icon via Feedburner, per your recommendation, Sue. I was hoping, though, that I could accomplish the same effect by copying feed code (http://bogwalker.edublogs.org/feed/)into RSS widget, but there must a different way to set that up, no?
I agree with you that when introducing teachers to blogging, it’s best to keep the side trips out of Edublogs to a minimum.
August 9, 2008 at 1:20 am
Not to the best of my knowledge.
August 9, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Great tip to allow time for students to read and not just write. I have been having trouble getting my students to really get into blogging and I think this will help. Thanks!!
August 9, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Cindy, are you just starting a new school year?