Wednesday 20 May 2009

Creating Class Blogs

Today was my first experience at sharing some of my web 2.0 knowledge with other educators. I presented a professional development workshop for the teachers at my school on creating class blogs. Only a small fraction of them actually turned up, but the ones who did were enthusiastic about using this new tool for learning.

I eventually used my own personal wiki to create a site that would guide my own teaching but also guide the teachers if they needed to go back and review what we covered. It will also serve to help those teachers who were not able to attend. One of the teachers said she found it easy to create her class blog from the instructions.

I cannot take all the credit, I borrowed heavily from two of my favourite New Zealand teachers and part of my PLN, Jacqui Sharp and Allanah. Thank you both, I used links to your blogs so I did not have to reinvent the wheel.
http://jacquisharp.blogspot.com
http://www.bling4yrblog.blogspot.com

My class blog wiki guide:
http://shaunwood.wikispaces.com/About+Blogs

I have encouraged these teachers to get their feet wet and post a few blogs, as well as introducing it to their classes. Our next step will be to comment on each others blogs to encourage participation and show the kids that they have a wider audience. I also plan to run a few short workshops to help the teachers start adding all the fun extras once they have gained some confidence.






2 comments:

  1. It'a great to know that people are still using the Blog Blog. I have a few more ideas for new posts when I get a spare minute!

    Cheers

    Allanah King

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  2. Just reviewed your web2.0 blog. Very good. If you want to expand your professional development efforts beyond blogs, check out my course Web2.0 course that I had teachers do last school year. I used a Google Docs spreadsheet as the central repository for information and for teachers to track their progress.

    http://klht20.wikispaces.com/23things

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