There was some great thought given and I look forward to keeping up with y’all as you implement what you learned!

Robin

John – One thing we have learned in this course is that we need to build in more required comments on the class blog. Relying on individual blogs causes a breakdown in the discussion. I appreciate the feedback and hopefully we can work on this for the second time we offer the course.

Severla people have had issues with the countdown timer. I’m still trying to figure that issue out. Stay tuned!

To everyone else – hang in there and I look forward to reading your philosophy of blogging.

Robin

John – Sorry, I haven’t played with that particular widget. I’ll check it out, though.

My blogging philosophy (rough draft):

I believe that it is important for everyone to become familiar with and utilize blogs because today’s society is on the expressway to high uses of technology in our professional and personal lives. Blogs allow everyone to be a writer, have a voice, and reach audiences both locally and internationally. Popular magazines, such as the New York Times, USA Today, and the BBC are not only making their articles available online, but encouraging readers to comment, ask further questions, and even correct what is being written through the use of blogs (Richardson, 2009). In an educational setting, it allows educators and students to communicate freely and collaborate, which is an essential skill for our students in future careers. My goal for blogging in my classroom is to develop a community of writters, free thinkers, and collaborators. Not only do I want this for myself and my students, but also for my students’ parents. This would be another avenue of communication, but not only with an individual, but with all of the parents.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

I would still like someone to help me set my countdown clock and keep it set to a certain date. Anyone out there that can help me?

Its interesting that you posted a blog by Richardson, b/c I’m currently reading his book, “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms” (2nd ed.). I think an important factor that was brought up in his blog was that, as educators, we need to realize that though the content we are teaching is extremely important, we also need to teach our students to be life-long learners. In today’s society, that means that we need to use these tools so that our students are prepared and able to find answers in the future.

I also found a blog that was skeptical of IWBs, and they had some interesting things to say. It was the first time since taking these classes that I felt that I had something to say about the topic. Others that I have read are very interesting and I’ve picked up new info., but never responded. I guess I feel a bit intimidated by the responses that I’m reading…maybe that’s just b/c I’m a novice:)

I looked at the blog and it seems that the page links go directly to the main page and are not coded to go to different pages. This might be a case when you need to dig into the HTML code to get things linked correctly. I am not sure how to trouble shoot this one without getting into the dashboard settings and looking around. Not much help, I am happy to help do this or you can talk to your campus ITS.

taylorjwk,

Hopefully we have met this request with our assignment for week 3. We really want you to take time to look at as many blogs as possible to help find your purpose in blogging. Let us know if you need more examples and we will get additional links posted.

Robin

I added a Lunar cycle widget so that the kiddos can be reminded/checking in on it regularly since that is something they (and I) forget often. I also added a frogger template for fun, and was trying to add a widget that had fun random facts, but having technical difficulty with this one:) For me, I think that I would like to change up the widgets to go with this that we are learning about/going on monthly. I had added an espn widget, but thought I would rather have that on a personal blog.

It took me a bit to get things arranged on the page b/c of size- widget column vs. blog column. Sometimes they were overlapping strangely. I think I got it figured out now though. I think what I need the most is time to work on the blog, creating postings, etc. to get things organzied and ready before school starts, being that this is something that I would like to start using soon.

I might have missed the answer to this question, so my applogies- how would we have students post to this blog if they don’t have accounts? Is this where we would use the mail to blogger feature? But that still requires them to have email accounts, and most of my students do not. Again, sorry if I’m repeating questions:)