We can work IT out

This post was written for a PD Session

Here are a collection of blogs that you might find interesting. Spend 30 minutes browsing through some of them.

Note that most blog posts aren’t too long – educational bloggers understand that teachers are time poor but do want to do professional reading.

If you find one you like, add a comment below, name the blog and say what you like about it.

Teacher / Subject Blogs

Maths With Mr B link ………. Langwitches link ……….Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day link

Hey Jude link ……….Teacher Lab (Science) link ……….Alison Hall’s Blog (Music) link

Tom Barrett link ……….The Whiteboard Blog link ……….Teaching Challenges link

Professional Blogs

Stories From School link ……….Joanne Jacobs link ……….Classroom 2.0 link

GoogleDocs Blog link ……….The Principal’s Page link ……….The Tempered Radical link

Classroom Blogs

Miller’s English 10 Classroom Blog link ……….Technology In Our Classroom link

Mrs Hossack’s First Graders link ……….Mrs Trefz’s Fifth Grade Blog link ……….The Tillis Tribune link

Look What’s Happening in Room 102 link ……….Piazza Mannino, 23 link

2km Leopold Primary School link ……….Grade 2 link ……….Room 5 At Work link ……….6KF link

Long List of Primary Blogs link ……….English Teaching blogs list link ……….Miss T’s Talented Texans link

Student Blogs

Jamie’s Blog link

Emily’s Blog link

Alexei’s Blog link

Image: Source

As part of the 31 Days to Better Blogging challenge, I needed to leave comments on blogs that I hadn’t commented on before. This is one of my favourite parts of blogging and I like to check back and see if there are any comments about my comment – ie continuing the conversation.

Over the past few weeks Sue Water’s has made numerous comments on my blog and I was curious as to how she knew that there were new comments to comment on.

Sue pointed me towards co.mment, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be allowing new users to register.

A quick Google search brought Commentful to my attention.

With commentful, you need to download and install a FireFox Extension so that functionality is added to your browser.

To use commentful, you right-click on a blog page and a pop-up menu appears with the choice of adding the feed to commentful (see post image).

Commentful also places a coloured circle in the display bar at the base of your browser window. It is usually yellow and turns green when it detects that a new comment has been made. I found over a 2 day period that my circle was always yellow. So, by clicking on it, a browser window opened with a list of the blog feeds that I have added. There is an option to click on a “check” button next to each blog in the list, which I did and then I noticed that the circle had turned green. I’m not sure if this happened before I pressed ‘check’ or after the first check.

While it isn’t quite working how I want (I want the button to go green without me going to the feeds page), it is still much more convenient than actually going to every blog. I also suspect that it is checking for comments on the entire blog and not just the post that you commented on, which is also a little disappointing. But, it does open to the actual blog post.

Overall, I would rate it as useful but not perfect.

What do you use to keep track of comments on your blogroll?

Have you found something better than commentful, let me know?

Grapphic: screen capture at Journeys In Education blog using commentful

To start Day 4, I made the changes that were suggested by Sue after she did an audit of my blog. Sue’s recent post on Mobile Technology in TAFE (with links to her The EduBlogger blog) was very helpful in adding the feedburner parts. It was easy to follow and it worked, but I’m not actually sure I could explain the intricacies of why.

For Day 4 the task is to ‘Interlink archived posts’. Given that my blog is quite new, there aren’t that many posts that I can go through to interlink.
I will look, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t.
I will keep in mind that it is good practice to do this on a regular basis.

For Day 5 I needed to update my ‘About Me’ page. I thought that this would have been fine as it was, but lo and behold, when I visited ‘About Me’, it was completely blank!
Now, how did that come to be? I’m sure it wasn’t erased by accident and think it must have been one of those things that I meant to do when I started the blog, thought I had done, but in fact, hadn’t done at all.
So, I now have About Colin on my blog. It’s not that I like talking about myself, but I had to work hard at not putting too much on the page. Here are some tips by Darren Rowse on what to put on your About page.

One of my own aims for today was to read through and comment on some of the other participants blogs. I managed to get through about half a dozen, which I am happy with. I would like to get to read the remainder over the enxt few days.

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The task for Day 3 is to Search for and Join a Forum.

One of the ways of sharing the project and developing a PLN during the project is the use of the project wiki. Each participant has their own page on the wiki, where they can reflect on the tasks throughout the project.

I used the wiki page for my day 3 reflection, so if you have read it there, you won’t need to read further here.

I have managed to get Day 3 out of the way, as well today. I have been a member of a number of forums for a while.
My first one was the ACCE Study Tour Ning, Then an NECC08 Ning, and recently I joined the ISTE SIG Independent Schools Ning. And, there are a few more I had forgotten about: Ning in Education, Voicethread for Educators, plus a few private ones that I use for school eg sharing news and photos with parents.
Embarrassing to admit, but I joined Classroom2.0 about a year ago and posted my thoughts on blogging (saying I didn’t get it – I meant it in a nice way ie as a shout for help) and didn’t go back for a long time. When I did, it was another one of those ‘oh, I already am a member here’ things.

The ACCE ning was useful as it was a way for a group to share different experiences while on the same journey. But, generally, I find the forums to be a little messy and hard to keep an eye on. I would suspect that more effort on my behalf is needed. This makes me worry about trying to keep it all going. And, it just may be that blogging, and twitter networks will be more of a focus than forums. I will though, keep and open mind and consider greater effort in the forum/s.

Below is Sue Water’s response to Day 3:

Between everything I do there is too much to do. While forums are good I have to prioritise my time so forums are really low on the list. My main reasons for being on a Ning are like Facebook – another option for people to learn about the work I do and to make connections with me. However for some people Nings are an important part of their learning. So is worth keeping open mind.

Blogging – shown early 2006 thought ridiculous. Early 2007 still ridiculous. April 2007 started blogging – slowly started to understand why important – you know the rest.

Thanks Sue!

I think that for me, the forums aren’t as instant – unlike Twitter, and I haven’t yet learnt a quick and painless way to see new content on the forums. Do nings have rss feeds?

While I will try to be open-minded, I suspect that in the end my social networking preferences will be:

1) Twitter

2) Blogging

3) Delicious

4) Forums

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Well, how long did one day (Day 1) take? What a lot of thoughtful comments! I’ve found that it takes time to be a good blogger: following links to blogs, reading through posts, trying to locate email addresses and first names of people, leaving comments on their blogs and following comments on my own. Phew, no wonder I haven’t blogged myself – how do I keep up with this when school is back? I just will, I hope. It’s been busy, and amazing – really enjoying the connections.

Okay, to Day 2.

Today, I need to ask a friend to “Run a First Time Reader Audit on My Blog”. I have left a request on Building a Better Blog ning and I will also twitter a request. I know a kind colleague somewhere will help out (I just hope I don’t run out of friends after 31 days!)

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In a timely way, one of my goals for 2009 was to improve my blogging and find a 30 days to better blogging project, and the same day I hear about the 31 Days Project that has just started (I think I’m a few days behind, but that’s okay). I’m torn between doing the beginners and the intermediate project – I think I need something in the middle, but I’ll start with the Intermediate and see how it goes.

“The task for the first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.”

Because this is a new blog (about 3 days old), this may be a little difficult as I have had only one person comment on my posts (thanks Sue) and I really don’t want to burden her – she’s already done so much to get me this far. So I don’t have to call on Sue, maybe you could comment on my post so that I can achieve the first task.

One of my reasons for blogging is to use it for professional growth and to have conversations about education and educational growth with others.

Earleir today, catching up on some blog feeds via Feedly I read Graham Wegner’s post titled “The 37 And A 1/2 Hours Sham“. Graham talks about the SA Education Department’s policy that requires teachers to do 37.5 hours of PD during the year in order to finish when students do. If they haven’t done the time, then they have to do other duties during the first week of the summer vacation. Because the Department is such a large bureaucracy, the degree of inequity in what teachers do for their 37.5 hours is high and in some cases laughable.

Luckily, I am not in the same system, though I am in the same state and while my school has some very good and generous policies regarding professional development, there is little accountability. I’d really like to see staff being encouraged to blog as a reflective practice and a professional conversation.

I’m hoping that in participating in this project, I can further my professional practice and help staff in my school do the same.

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I’ve never written down goals before (well, not these type) and I’m a little reluctant to start now. What if I don’t make any of them? What if they are in conflict with the goals of my workplace? What if they make me look like a luddite, or if they are just plain ordinary?

However, I want to have a set a goals so that I can keep track of where I want to go, where I want to direct the teachers I work with, so that I can say at the end, these are the things that I achieved or have tried to achieve. What do I need to do next to get there? What has happened throughout the year that will make me edit or re-think my goals for the following year? Deep breath . . . I will:

1. encourage the staff in my workplace to use Yammer as an alternate form of cumminication and to see that it has many (and different) benefits over email;
2. run a Web2.0 course for the School administrators and have them use a blog and other web tools on a regular basis;
3. run a Blog Course for interested teachers – along the lines of 30 days to be a better blogger (which I really want to do myself) Coincidentally, Sue Waters has just blogged about a new 30 Days Project starting up;
4. encourage the teachers (that I worked with during 2008) to use a variety of web tools in 2009 eg VoiceThread, Blogging;
5. blog regularly and keep commenting on blogs that I read
6. create a portal for my maths class so that there is an online presence and support for learning
7. be a better father;

I’m sure there are more goals, and I hope to add some over the next few weeks.

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