Principal encourages social media in the classroom

It's nice to know that educators like Eric Sheninger are getting recognized for their sensible approach to technology and learning. Sheninger, principal of a high school in New Jersey, believes in tapping the power of social media to engage students.

"The Internet as we know it is the 21st century," Sheninger says in a recent article from USA Today. "It is what these students have known their whole lives. They're connected, they're creating, they're discussing, they're collaborating."

I have been very fortunate to have worked for a principal who embraced technology and supported my efforts to use digital tools and social media in the classroom. While he retired last year, his replacement seems equally interested in using Web 2.0 tools, and has plans to start a blog in order to allow him to communicate with students, parents, and faculty. I think it's a wonderful idea.

If you're an educator, and you aren't blogging, you should, according to Wired Educator's Kelly Croy.  Click here to get started and join the conversation!


Social media image by Stephen Traversie

A New Look

I've decided to mix things up here at Mr. B-G's English Blog. After stumbling across what just might be the most helpful Blogger site out there, Blogger Buster, and perusing its beautiful link list of blog templates, I made the decision to make a switch.

A word of warning to any of you newer bloggers considering a switch: Most - if not all - of your widgets will be lost, and chances are the things you liked about your old blog won't necessarily reproduce themselves in your new blog. However, if you keep searching for the right template, it's likely you'll eventually find more things that you DO like with a new look that will make a switch worthwhile.

I suppose I grew tired of my bland background. I wanted something a bit more graphically appealing, yet still visually simple and easy to read. This template, called Zen, seemed to satisfy both of those requirements.

Felicem Diem Natalem

Mr. B-G's English Blog is officially two years old. Two years isn't a lot of time - it feels like I've been blogging for about five. It's hard to imagine how I taught before this blog, as it's become so entwined in all I do as an educator.

This blog - and the subsequent network it spawned - serves a variety of purposes. This page is a space for me to reflect on my teaching, share the highs and lows of the profession, and network with other tech-savvy educators.

Since its genesis in December of 2006, Mr. B-G's English Blog has been seen by more than 32,500 people from across Massachusetts, the U.S., and the world. A quick look at my sitemeter profile shows recent visits from Osaka, Japan; Gostar, Iran; Rome, Italy; and Schniach, Germany. Closer to home, this site has been viewed by people in Arlington, MA; Princeton, NJ; Jackson, TN; and Los Angeles, CA.

There's been a measurable progression in terms of content and organization over the last two years. Within a few months of this blog's inception, I created a separate page for class handouts and teaching resources, and another dedicated to my journalism class and the newspaper I advise. I then created individual class blog pages where I posted student work.

New for this year was Mr. B-G's Blog Exemplar, a paged designed to help teachers and students create their own blogs. Rather than limiting my students' blogging experiences to individual class blogs that I control, I've taught my kids how to create their own. So far we've used them to post compare/contrast essays and book reviews. In a few weeks, students will publish their own short stories, followed later by an analytical essay on The Old Man and the Sea, original poetry, and Romeo & Juliet editorial columns.

I'll need to take stock at the end of the year to see if my students' writing is, overall, better than that of last year's students. My theory is that publication and greater control over the act of publishing leads to better-written pieces. Certainly the quality of my instruction and the opportunities I provide for peer sharing, editing, and revision have the greatest effect on the caliber of my students' writing, but all things being constant, my hunch is that their writing will be better because they have more ownership and control of its distribution to the masses. The fact that it's really easy to edit and revise the text of a blog post helps too.

It's hard to know what lies in store for Mr. B-G's English Blog in Year 3. While I don't post quite as often as I would like (usually 3 times per month), I do constantly add to my link lists. In addition to a place for writing, these blogs are also online bookmarks accessible to all. While I do use Foxmarks to sync my Firefox bookmarks on any computer I use, it's nice to have many of them saved in a public location for others to check out.

Over time I'd like to provide more opportunities for my students to post writing online. There's no substitute for an authentic audience that's ready and willing to give you feedback on your musings. To me, Web 2.0 tools make the writing process more "real," and give students a unique and powerful forum in which to communicate and learn.

What is written here

I am in the process of teaching my students how to create their own blogs. As I wrote here, students will eventually have their own individual class blogs featuring writing from a variety of genres.

As the blogs pop up, I will begin posting assignments on a new page called Mr. B-G's Blog Exemplar. Here I will provide a simplified blog model for students to imitate, post writing assignments and comment instructions, and, over time, provide my own models of the assignments I would like students to complete.

To date I've been using Mr. B-G's English Blog to muse about my own teaching, take stances on all things education related, and post things I believe other teachers will enjoy reading.

I've also used it to post class assignments. In the future, all assignment instructions will be found on my "exemplar" blog. As usual, Mr. B-G's English Teaching Resources will still be the one-stop source for my handouts and links for the teaching and study of secondary English.

It is my hope that this new page will add an additional level of organization to Mr. B-G's English Blog. Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Image from http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/create-new-blog-commoncraft-0.jpg, accessed 9/11/08

Blogging into summer reading essays

We're just about a week into the new school year, and so far, things are going well.

My freshmen and seniors have been working on summer reading essays. I asked them to pick two characters from two books they read and have those characters meet and interact in the setting of one book. They needed to use dialogue, be descriptive, and keep it between 500 and 1000 words.

Most seem to have embraced the assignment. One of my seniors was working on an essay where James Bond meets Harry Potter. I can't wait to read it.

Students were asked to save their essays on my USB drives, which I am using to upload the essays to our class blogs. Students will then be able to read each others' work and post comments. Once the kids get the hang of reading and posting blog comments, I'm going to teach them how to create their own blogs. The idea here is that by the end of the year they'll have an electronic portfolio of writing in some of the major English genres (poetry, short story, personal narrative, analysis, compare & contrast, and research).

An added benefit of individual student blogs is they'll be in a much better position to revise, as they can take the feedback they get from comments and use them to make changes and improvements to their essays on the blog. For the past two years I've used class blogs that I control as the means for sharing student writing. These lacked a mechanism for revision, as students could not add or alter content.

Now, with individual pages, students should be able to experience the power that comes with publishing writing and the ownership of knowing they can alter and post content whenever they choose. Hopefully the blogs will spur students to write beyond the requirements for my class. If their usage of MySpace and Facebook are any indication, there's good reason to feel optimistic.

101 Web 2.0 Teaching Tools

While perusing teacher blogs this evening, I came across this great link to 101 Web 2.0 Teaching Tools. Some of these I have heard of and used, but many I learned about for the first time. If anyone has success or experience with any of these resources in particular, please let me know.

Thanks to Jo McLeay at The Open Classroom for the link, which I discovered by checking out the Online Education Database.

Blog navigation

As new visitors come to this site, I hope they can figure out how to access postings and materials, and see that there is an attempt - however feeble - at organization.

Each of my posts have what I call "categories" listed at the end. Some bloggers call these "labels" or "tags." I've done my best to assign each post to at least one category. Some might have two or three, as they tend to overlap.

Students and teachers looking for assignments can click on that category. There are also a number of handouts and links on my teacher page. Most of the categories are self-explanatory, except maybe for "musings." Musings are a catch-all for anything I want to write about that doesn't fit neatly into one of the main categories.

When I first started this blog, I didn't know who my audience was. In fact, I didn't have much of one, and was really writing for myself. Now there are a number of folks who visit the blog. Sometimes my posts are written for students (usually bearing an assignment tag), others are written for teachers (with an education label), and some are written for no one in particular. I hope the blog post categories help explain some of my intentions for each post, and make navigating this site a little easier.

I look forward to comments, suggestions, and any ideas or posting requests. Thanks for visiting!

Ripway file server is down

I discovered today that the Ripway file hosting site I used to upload all my handouts and assignments is down. I don't know if this is a temporary or permanent situation. I have e-mailed the folks at Ripway inquiring as to what is going on.

If it turns out the site is dead, I will need to upload all of my files again to a new server. I don't know when everything will be back up, as if your lives are like mine, it seems that on some days I barely have enough time to eat three square meals.

Ah the joys of teaching... and technology!

If anyone knows of a free and reliable file hosting site that allows direct links, please let me know.

Fifty blogging resources for teachers

A shout-out to Louann over at Multiliteracies for sharing The Four Eyed Technologist's annotated link list of 50 blogging resources for teachers.

About a month ago I gave a technology presentation at our school district's first mentor/protege meeting of the year. Ironically, I had to create a paper handout to accompany my lecture because the room I was presenting in wasn't equipped with a video projector.

One of my topics was blogs in the classroom. I hope this list of resources is helpful for teachers looking to use blogs to engage students and enhance their curriculum.

Information revolution

The Internet has permanently altered the way we store, access, and transmit information. This is another brilliant video by Michael Wesch, who also created The Machine is Using/Us.

Parents, Blogs, and Socratic Seminar

Midterm grades close this Friday. It's hard to believe we're already halfway into the first quarter. Yet then again, it feels like we've been at it for awhile.

Last week I met about sixty parents at open house. It was great to see such a strong turnout and meet those responsible for the fantastic students I've been blessed with this year. Today, for example, one of my 9th grade classes had a Socratic seminar on Steinbeck's The Pearl. The kids asked rich questions, listened to and built off each others' responses, and waited to be called on by the student moderator before speaking. The students were respectful, sincere, and well prepared.

The day after open house I gave a presentation about using technology to enhance one's practice at our district's mentor/protegee meeting. I plan to blog more about that later and post links to a variety of resources that helped me launch my blog and use electronic tools in the classroom.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from a teacher in Florida who wanted to know how I was able to avoid cyber-bullying on my student blog pages. I did iterate with students that the blogs were an academic space, and modeled for them what would be considered an acceptable comment. I also provided specific instructions (posted on the student blog pages) for commenting that depended on the nature of the assignment and the type of feedback I wanted them to provide.

Because I was the sole administrator of the blogs, only I could make blog posts, and I was free to delete any comments that were inappropriate. I think I removed about five comments total, and that was largely because they didn't follow the prompt instructions, not because they were vulgar.

For more about my experiences blogging with students, read this post from earlier.

Header beautification

Thanks to this helpful post from Paul Stamatiou, and this post from Tips For New Bloggers, I was able to crop a picture I shot from the Appalachian Trail of clouds floating above the Blue Ridge Mountains and paste it into my header as a background image.

The key was sizing the image correctly. To fit it inside the header boarders, I cropped the picture to 640 x 140, with a resolution of 180 pixels.

With only one week of school left, I will soon be able to dedicate more time to improving both the aesthetics and content of this blog. One of the things I'd like to do is upload the 12 or so newspaper columns I wrote about my attempted thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2001. When all was said and done, I hiked for three months and traversed 1,000 miles.

I have about 1,000 to go. Last summer I hiked 45 miles in Massachusetts and Vermont. This summer a friend and I will be doing another 70 in Mass. It is my hope that I can continue to log 50 to 100 miles each summer for the next 10-15 years, and finish the trail by the time I'm in my (gulp) early 40s.

Intro to Web 2.0

This video has received millions of views, and depicts well the developmental, transitional, and influential powers of the Internet's effect on the way we create, understand, and communicate knowledge.

A comment's worth

Below are two comments from Louann's Multiliteracies blog about the value of blog comments. I think without comments, a blog wouldn't be, by definition, a blog. Any comments?

Anna Marie Strzyz said...
Because I'm so new to blogging, I find exploring other blogs to be more fulfilling than working on my own. I've left a few comments along the way and enjoy engaging in this way. I don't want my blog to be a site that just tells/shows - I want a conversation. But, I know I need to provide a few more prompts for feedback and responses. I also wonder, with so many blogs out there, how much conversation can there be on one post?
February 21, 2007 3:12 PM

Mr. B-G said...
In response to Anna, I'm sure it depends on the quality of the conversation, and also on the number of comments a post initially receives. Sometimes when reading a blog post that's received numerous comments, there's a greater lure or desire to make a comment, as I suppose we think more people might hear us.

I guess if a posting moves you, make a comment, although I acknowledge it's not always that easy.

Blogging is a different form of communication. Imagine being able to read something, post a reaction, and then have the author of that post - or other readers - reply back to you! I don't think we've been taught to read and think this way, although as English teachers we try to teach our students to respond to and become engaged with literature.

This response and engagement means sharing reactions, thoughts, feelings, insights, favorite passages, themes, characters, plot developments, writing techniques, etc.

I suppose it's the blog medium, and the action of commenting, that's different.

In a literature circle, we discuss aloud with classmates after having read and written something. With a blog, we read, type, post, and then read. It's a silent (digital?) discussion. It's a medium change. The question is, what of this medium change? What are the implications? What new things can we achieve? What are the limitations?

I think each of us is finding this out as we go along. These comments allow us to communicate these and other insights, but perhaps more importantly, allow us to realize that we're blazing the same trail together, even if we aren't riding side by side.
February 24, 2007 5:50 PM

Scratching the surface

This article from eSchool News online does a nice job giving a basic overview of the rise of employee blogging, and the questions that administrators and CEOs face when it comes to crafting guidelines and regulations for employees. It also praises blogging's potential, especially for educators:

Self-initiated and often self-sustaining, employee blogs can speed information sharing, increase problem-solving, and improve productivity within an organization. For example, teachers can post an internal blog about a challenge they're facing in the classroom and receive hundreds of potential
solutions from their colleagues quickly and easily.

Combined with RSS feeds, which automatically update subscribers whenever new content is posted, blogs can be used to swap lesson plans, teaching strategies, discipline tips, and new research. Blogging's potential for connecting and engaging employees in online conversations can help reduce classroom isolation,as teachers find a home in professional online communities.

Blogging also can help educators meet and converse with colleagues in other district schools without leaving their respective school campuses.
By increasing collaboration, many school leaders hope blogging will help their faculties generate new and better ways to help students succeed.

Since I began blogging in December, I've felt more energized and excited about what I'm doing in the classroom. Being able to easily communicate with educators from across the country and the world has broadened and deepened my sense of professional community. I still find it amazing that I'm able to get lesson ideas from teachers in Texas, Hawaii, or Alaska - but I can, and I have.

I feel we are just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of the digital innovations that will shape public education in the 21st century.

How to write a hyperlink

Last night I was reading The Cool Cat Teacher Blog and came across this image. It shows you how to manually create hypertext links.

I always wondered how people were able to include hyperlinks with their comment posts. I used to think I would be forever clueless. Now, like Siddhartha, I am enlightened! Thanks Cool Cat Teacher. Your name does not belie your nature.

Web-based file sharing server

I've found a free file sharing site that will allow me to save up to 1 GB of files to its servers on the web, and allow anyone to access them. The site is Box.net. The name reminds me of Al Gore's ill-famed "lockbox," which provided writers at SNL countless parody fodder.

OK, see if you can access my Socratic Seminar file. I've uploaded it, and it should be ready to download.

For kicks, here's an Adobe PDF file: Editing and Proofreading Checklist

***

I've just discovered another free file sharing server, Ripway. It only allows 30 MB of free storage, but might be faster than Box.net. How long does it take to download this file on comma usage?

HFS File Server

HFS File Server is a program that allows you to make your computer into a web server. You are able to have a folder where you can drop and drag files, and each file is assigned a URL, allowing you to share the file with anyone... the only caveat is that because your computer is the server, it needs to be left on and connected to the Internet in order to work.

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

I would like to thank Sean M. for telling me about Google Docs and Spreadsheets. I had been looking for a way to upload documents to the web and create URLs. Through Google Docs, I am able to create an individual link for any Word or text document I would like. Here, for example, is the link to the short story assignment: Short story blog assignment . This is much better than posting a blog entry containing the entire text. I may even have students upload their short stories to Google Docs, and then post the links on the blog. We shall soon see.

The blog world

I'm feeling refreshed and excited about this blog's potential. It's fascinating to know that there are hundreds - if not thousands - of teachers using blogging technology. By visiting other teachers' blogs, I gain entrance into other academic worlds and am able to learn how other teachers and students are using blogs to extend the classroom and enhance learning.

It's a new year, and as we stand on the cusp of an educational wave, the future looks bright, albeit pixilated.