Tag: share
A Rubric for Adding Posts to Student Blogs
Hi Everyone (though with my slack posting of late, I doubt that I will have much everybody left 😉
I am quite tired, so this isn’t going to be one of my traditional sprawling tales. We had our annual Pukeokahu School Horse Trek over the weekend, and I spent the weekend serving up 6am breakfasts, peeling various vegetables, feeding hungry trekkers and sleeping poorly in a smelly shearers bed (it was actually a wonderful weekend and I had a fantastic time, especially driving around the Mokai Range and maybe the party on Saturday Night 8-).
Anyway, so I just wanted to share the rubric my students and I created during the first three weeks of school this year. My goal was for my students to create an easy to use tools which would allow them to self assess their posts on their ePortfolios in a way that they would be able to make improvements with less and less input from me.
We began by brainstorming (in small groups, then compiled as a class) what makes a fantastic blog post, after which we put the brainstormed points in to five headings, Interesting, Tools, Attributions, Punctuation and Spelling, Categories. That night, I made up the blank rubric and entered the points into the Expert column. The next day I modelled filling in one square per column, I then gave my three pairs of students two heading each to fill in. Finally, we all came together and shared and debated the final wording, while I typed it in on my laptop. This is our finished product:
I must say that, this rubric was created by kids which had a good six months of blogging behind them through the Student Blogging Challenge. So far the kids have used it for two posts, and they are not using it independently yet. I need to constantly remind them to check back to the Rubric, and I am always saying that they need to strive for at least an Advanced level. However, apart from my nagging, kids do actually enjoy using it. They find it easy to use and relavant to their ‘Real World Wide Audience’s’ needs and are beginning to remind each other to use it.
So that’s it really, I just wanted to share this with you as you might find it useful. But if you do decide to use a rubric to help your kids blogging, you must remember that the only way the kids will take ownership of the rubric and find it enjoyable is if you help the kids create the rubric themselves.
Attributes:
Photo by Tristin at Pukeokahu Schools Flickr Album:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pukeokahuschool/5506905651/in/set-72157626093421921/
Teaser Three – Watching the Progress Bar turn Blue
Lately I have been using Camtasia to create Screen Casts for my eWindows site. Now usually I am a strictly freeware kind of girl (well that’s a little bit of a fib because I have paid for Edublogs, Voicethread, Flickr and my domain names, anyway …) but I am really impressed with Camtasia. So much so that I may even fork-out for it after my free one month trial (this is awesome, try before you buy!).
Camtasia is easy to use, has great support and tutorials. It runs seamlessly with my Mac and uploads directly to YouTube. At one easy payment of $99.00 (Education Pricing) I do believe it may be a keeper, though it may have to wait until after I recover from my little trip to Christchurch (only 9 more sleeps!). O, and after we wallpaper the living room. Below is my weekly-ish offering to the Blog-o-sphere. My third ever Screen Cast on how to add a Wordle.net Word-cloud to a post. So readers, I would really like some feedback here, how did I do? It’s a lot harder than it looks.
Teaser Two – Playing With Prezi
Here is my second offering to the blog-o-sphere from my uLearn09 presentation
An eWindow into my Classroom
This is a Prezi Presentation that will feature on the home page of my ulearn site. Prezi is an alternative to the standard slideshow presentation. I have added a fun little ‘how to’ I found on YouTube for those of you who want to know more. If you do decide to use Prezi as a presentation tool, it is important to remember that Prezi is best viewed in ‘full screen’.
Just click the large grey arrows at the bottom of the screen to scroll through the presentation.
This is a cool little how to video I found on YouTube – Thanks zuilabs
Preparing for ulearn09
elearn09 is approaching rapidly and I am feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Excitement because this is my first ulearn experience and I get to have some face to face time with the many awesome NZ Educators. Anxiety because for some strange reason, must of had one too many coffees that day, I applied to be a presenter and was accepted! Eek! 😮
My presentation is called An eWindow into my Classroom (Breakout Five for any of you who are interested in attending).
Join me as we create a classroom blog that allows parents and whanau to be an active part of classroom learning. We will be using a variety of Web2.0 tools that are free and easy to use. There will be tips and tricks on how to make your blog appealing to students and informative to parents. I will also talk about ways you can engage an audience in the global community. Your classroom blog can be so much more than another publishing platform, it can be an interactive environment that enhances student learning.
(Believe it or not it took me four hours to write that synopsis.)
I am hoping that by the end of the session we will have constructed a mock classroom blog and or set up the bones and a few fancy bits in my ‘victims’ own classroom blogs. I will set up a fairly open rotation where participants can engage in a variety of cool web2.0 tools that will enhance your classroom blog and to make it ‘blog-i-licious’ (blog-i-licious – my term for a blog that is engaging, fun, funky, collaborative, communicative and of course enhances learning, thanks Fergie!) My brainwave for this presentation is that all of my presentation’s content will be sourced on a Wetpaint Wiki. That way participates will always have a point of reference to go back to after the intensity of the conference.
I have found Wetpaint is an easy to use platform, possibly less finicky than Wikispaces (of course this is only my opinion). My only real bugbare is that you are unable to view the html code, but I can get over that. Each page on this Wiki will explore a different Web2.0 app. I will include tips and tricks on how to use each app. in your blog as well as include examples of how I have used it in my own classroom blog.
As you have all probably guessed by now; this post is basically shameless self-promotion on my part. But it is also me feeling a bit guilty for neglecting my blog for this my newfangled wiki of mysterious means (I am keeping it private until the conference). Therefore I, in another self-promotion tactic, will be releasing sneak peaks to a few of my wiki’s page as my blog posts during the lead up to ulearn09. I will have omit a one or two links and leave out a some of the workshop content, but I hope these sneak peaks will pique your interest in attending my workshop (remember Breakout Five) or at the very least consider playing around with creating your own classroom blog, or maybe adding a bit of ‘Bling’ to your existing one.
What’s a Wallwisher?
Thanks to a new blog post from manaiakalani I found this new little beauty wallwisher.com. I must say I am quite excited! Maybe it is the pretty colours; or the ease of use; how about the ability to add links and pictures; the open collaboration; being able to embed and definately the silly monkey picture!
I won’t go into detail, you guys can just get in there and have a play – add a note to my wall … go on I dare you!
Look really embeded!!!!!!!!!!!