Posts Tagged edublogs

Student blog posts – please comment on one if you can!

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, online tools, social media, university on October 11, 2012

2012-264 Whiteboard Note

CC-licensed Flickr image by mrsdkrebs

This semester I have been leading a group of future Teacher Librarians through the Masters of Ed. unit ‘Youth, popular culture and texts‘.

For their second assignment they have to contribute to a group learning blog.

Here are links to blog posts from each of the SIX student blog groups that I will be charged with assessing at the end of October:

I would be really grateful if folks could click through to any of these and drop a comment!

For many students in this unit it is their first attempt at adding to a blog like this – an extra comment here and there will make a big difference to their experience.

Thanks in advance 🙂

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Edublog Awards 2009

Posted by kmcg2375 in online tools, social media on December 1, 2009

These Edublog Award nominations go out to all the amazing PLN peeps who have helped, inspired and motivated me this year:

…plus so many other connections and friends who’ve helped me to sustain my energy this year, in particular via Twitter.  Special mentions go to my Boss @jmun31 who has heartily embraced the 2.0 world, and to @MaralynParker who generously replies to many of our education tweets, and keeps debate flowing.

Happy blogging and PLN-ing into the New Year 🙂

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Edublogs blocked by DET

Posted by kmcg2375 in online tools, school, technology on February 11, 2009

Well, the NSW DET has finally gotten up to blocking the last place we had left to blog, edublogs.  Along with everything else.

Any site that can be classified as a blog or wiki is blocked to students from years 6-10 at best – most are blocked for senior students too.  The constant fear that we all now must live with of our students having any interaction *whatsoever* with the outside world lives on.  Forget using edublogs, pbwiki, twitter, edmodo, wordpress…the list goes on.

Add to this the continued blocking of two of the most used/useful sites on the whole internet – Google apps and YouTube – and what is there left on the internet to use??

The DET released a new version of guidelines for creating blog sites in December 2008.  Though it is hard to understand the point of this, when the sites are blocked anyway.  Am I missing something here?  And, while I understand the importance of ensuring student privacy, consider the following requirements included in the guidelines:

  • All users must be registered and password protected to prevent anonymous contributions.
  • All contributions are moderated by the Teacher Administrator before publication.

I can see where they are coming from.  Honestly.  But guidelines like this make it either untenable or just plain uncomfortable to use a blog with a class.  Students who have problems signing up, logging on, or remembering a password will be disengaged with the blog and class management becomes a joke in blogging lessons where kids can’t get onto their blog.  And moderating comments before they are published is just too much.  This is like asking kids to run their classroom answers past you before they say them out loud!

Using online learning spaces provide students with opportunities to learn about cyberbullying and ‘netiquette’ – shielding students from online environments will not adequately prepare them for the world of work into which they will enter post-school.  School rules, student welfare, and sound pedagogical practices are not abandoned in these online spaces – if anything, the transparency of these sites (your Principal, or your student’s parents, could decide to take a look at any time!) is more likely to promote professional practice.

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