Blogging with Sue

I have never been a huge fan of blogging and I think that is partly because of lack of understanding. I always saw blogging as an online journal and I'm not a journal person.

Sue's presentation was great in that it gave me a better understanding of what blogging is and how it can be used. I had already gone through all the step by step process in setting up a blog so that area I felt comfortable in except for a few little pieces.

What I like the most about what Sue said was how blogging gave people a voice. I think for where I work this is such a great tool. I am in an alternative setting where a lot of students struggle. They have difficulties with relationships, alcohol/drugs, family disfunction, police, and mental health issues. Blogging gives these students an avenue to express their thoughts, frustrations and feeling in a safe way.

I see blogging in our school at a way for kids to communicate with staff, students and beyond. I also see it as a way for them to show their writing and use it as a hand in tool for some of their writing assignments. It seems that as soon as you change the process of writing from paper and pencil or word to a blog students open of the flood gates.

So onward we go...

Class blogging journey...

Well I figured that now that I have my class and staff on Edublogs that I should switch over my ECI 831 blog site as well. Getting students working on their blog sites was pretty easy and they caught on really fast. Students had their themes and colours picked out before I could say click appearance!

As for the staff that’s another story…

I found that the staff had the most difficulties getting up a rolling. Students were waiting and helping them find where to click and it actually slowed us down quite a bit. Although I love it when students can teach us things and support our learning, for time sake I may not do it this way next time. I would probably get the staff set up on theirs first and then have them watch the students get set up.

So now that I have us all on we will start our first posts this week. I am curious to see how it comes together once students are on and posting. I still don’t really have a visual of how that will look but will fond out soon enough. I really liked the last blackboard session, because the first thing the STAFF asked is why do we blog, and whats the purpose of this? So it was great to have some answers to those questions as well as direction for me in setting this up.

The funny thing was that all the students wanted to know is if they can message their friends on the blog.

One issue I am having is I have switched over to edublogs for my blog but I don't know how to connect to ECI 831. I am sure it is really easy but I just haven't figured it out yet. So for now I will continue using this one