Blogging at Katikati College

Hello, my name is Natalie Cowie and I am the English HOF at Katikati College.
I have had very limited experience with ICT until recently. My first attempts have involved moodle, blogs and wikis. Near the end of May I created two blogs for the English students at Katikati College. The first one is at http://schol.wordpress.com and it is aimed at Year 13 students and the other one is at http://ncowie.wordpress.com and that is for Year 9-13 students. When I started out I had not even read a blog so I wasn't actually sure what I was going to do with them. As time has progressed they have become noticeboards and display areas for the faculty. I do get lots of informal feedback from the students but I would prefer them to use the comment feature on the blogs more.

To get more student interaction we have created 5 wikis at PB wiki and 1 wiki on moodle and we are finding them all worthwhile. We are also using Classblogmeister with several classes and this is also proving interesting.

Our blogs have been added to the ICT in English blogroll and we would love any feedback and suggestions.

U46 Early Learners Blog: Lovely Literature Links...

U46 Early Learners Blog: Lovely Literature Links...

Library Blogs

Has anyone got a library community set up around a blog? I've come across a few articles that suggest this is a way to get kids interest in libraries re-kindled...I'm not sure..?

I've started a fairly basic one for my school library -
Mrs C's Library Blog - and will wait to see how it goes.

TwitterLit

So I added a Twitter to my VirtualNorth blog to help me think about the potential value of this widget... do people really need to know what others are doing every second of the day? Maybe a reflective tool... or to 'vocalise' questions on my mind...or what about a collaborative tool that a team could use while working on a combined project?

Discovered the TwitterLit which I have added to the sidebar. Posted by Yvonne Andres...
"TwitterLit.com - Twittering the first lines of books so you don't have to! If you are a writer or a book lover, or if you are trying to inspire students to become writers and book lovers - you will certainly enjoy TwitterLit.com" What is TwitterLit? - Realising that the opening sentences of books are often an intriguing attention getters, twice a day, TwitterLit creator Debra Hamel, posts the first line of a book, without the author's name or book title. Why? Well, according to Hamel, "Because it's fun and quick daily literary teaser?"

If you are interested in exploring the potential benefits of emerging learning technologies also discovered a series of articles online including...7 Things You Should Know About Twitter..."focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues."

Rather than using Debra Hamel's TwitterLit you could set up your own using Twitter. Be interested to read your thoughts or experiences using Twitter or any other technologies with your students.

More about twitter use in education here.

Bling4yrblog

This is the first time I have written on someone else's blog and the whole experience is 'interesting'. I have been lurking for some time but have now come out in the open.

Fiona asked me to share my blog...

http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/

I wrote it to support a presentation I did at the TUANZ conference in Nelson earlier this year. I had been blogging for a couple of years and put it together to archive some of the best finds I had come across to add a few extras to my class blog to make it a bit flasher to engage my students. I am intending to use it as a basis of my presentation at ULearn in Auckland in October.

http://moturoa.blogspot.com

In it I give a heap of 'how to' posts. Hope you find it useful....

• Setting up a Blogger Account
• Fine tuning your blog
• The Navbar Option
• Changing Things on Your Side Bar
• Adding a Clock
• Adding Links to Your Blog
• Adding a Webnote
• Adding Text to the sidebar
• Adding an email link in the side bar
• Adding a Calendar
• Allowing a Download from the Blog
• Link a Delicious Account
• Adding a Generated Graphic
• Adding a site counter
• Jig-saw puzzles
• Bubbleshare Slideshow
• Adding a PowerPoint Presenation
• Rock You Slideshow
• Adding Scrapbooked Photos
• Adding a Snap Preview to you links
• Adding a short video to your blog
• Make a podcast of your blog
• Using Flock Web Browser
• Bloglines Blog Aggregator

The thing I would most encourage you to do is to change the blogger navigation bar at the top of the page so that children cannot link out of your blog and randomly come across content which is undesirable.

Allanah K