Student Blogging as Digital Portfolios - Part 3 - About Me Pages

This is Part 3 of my Lesson plan on Student Blogging as Digital Portfolios. Part 1 walked you through the steps to set up a class blog and student blogs on Edublogs. Part 2 was the part of the lesson where the students wrote an autobiographical statement to use as their "About Me" page on their own blogs. And this, my friends, is the part where your students introduce themselves to the ONLINE WORLD!

My daughter Ayla helped demonstrate this section with me,  so it is her blog we are creating here.

When my students log onto the computers at school, they are automatically directed to our division portal, which is where I provided them with a link to the Class Blog. You will have to provide a link for your students wherever is most convenient for them and your system. When they get there, they will be on the Home screen of your Class Blog. Mine looks like this:

My theme is the Edublogs theme Patchwork, but I changed the background image from a plain tan background, to the dark coffee beans. I wanted a darker background so that the boxes would stand out more, and I LOVE coffee! The background was a free one I downloaded from Pixabay, which is an excellent place to find high quality images of all kinds, that are free of copyrights under Creative Commons. It is vital that we teach our students about copyright rules early on, but that's a post for another day.  

The first step is for all kids to click on their own blog with their name on it. I walk the kids through this by having a sample up on the Smartboard and pausing at each step to make sure all kids are on the same page. If they get lost at this point, it is hard for them to find where to go, and you will have a LOT of hands up! Next, show them the menu across the top, right under the picture. The menu lists all the pages on their blog site. At this point, it will have “Home” and “Sample Page”. Explain that on a blog site, there are Pages and Posts. Pages are for information we want people to be able to quickly get to any time. This info won’t change very much, like the About Me page we are creating today. We will click on Sample Page.

Once on the Sample Page, students will click the EDIT button to the right of the title, which will take them into the editing part of the site. Make sure all students are there before continuing. The first thing they will do is to change the words "Sample Page" to the words "About Me". 

(Under that title is a permalink, which you will also want to change, but I suggest going around and doing that for the students, for simplicity. You will want to leave the rest of the permalink the same, just change the words sample-page to about-me.)

Next, the students type their autobiographical statement from the last part of the lesson into the big white space available! 

*For students who struggle with typing, they could first record their writing in a Google Doc using the Read & Write speech-to-text extension, and then copy and paste their work into this blank space.

The following video is Ayla and I going through the process of typing her autobiographical statement onto her blog page. 

 

When done, the students click the blue UPDATE button on the left side of the page, and VOILA! They are internet sensations! Well, maybe not yet... but soon! 

As a closure for this lesson, I pull the Class blog up on the Smartboard so the kids can share their pages with each other. I email all the parents so they can check out their child's new page. This is only the beginning of a year of digital portfolios! 

Student Blogging as Digital Portfolios - Part 2 - Autobiographical Statement

Part 1 of this lesson included instructions on how to set up a class blog and student blogs. If you haven't read that one yet, I would suggest doing that first! Click HERE for that post.

This is the first part of my writing lesson that will lead students to creating their About Me pages on their student blogs. You will notice that this lesson references a PowerPoint presentation quite often. I have included pictures of the slides where necessary, and links to the video showing the whole presentation. If you would like a copy of the actual PowerPoint slide presentation, please email me and I can send it directly to you.

INTRODUCTION (gathered in reading area)
To begin the introduction, gather the students in your reading area and read them the book Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews. This is an autobiography about a boy in New Orleans who grows up to become a jazz legend. I chose this book because it is an age-appropriate example of an autobiography, and a good story! I found the book at my local library, but it is available on Amazon:
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com
There is also a video that gives an overview of the book with his beautiful music in the background.

Ask your students “Who is this story about?” “Who wrote this book?”. Explain that when the author of the book is telling about him/herself, that is called an Autobiography. Break down the word for them on poster paper:
o Auto means Self
o Bio means Life
o Graphy means Account, writing, recording
See if they can come up with other examples of words that use those parts (like automobile, biology, choreography, etc.)

This is when I tell my students that we are going to be creating blogs as digital portfolios this year. This means that they will all get to record videos, audio, post pictures and writing to show all the things they are learning about in Grade 2! I want this to be exciting for them! Most of them will be familiar with "YouTubers" who are "famous", and that is a kind of video blogging!

In order to start a blog though, the reader needs to know WHO the blog is about. So, for their very first blog post, they will be writing an autobiographical statement. Or, more simply put, an "About Me" page!

So why do we need to teach about autobiographies if we are writing an online blog?! I take a few answers from students here, and maybe some with hit on the answer! A BLOG (web log) is like a digital autobiography! A BLOG can be an ongoing story that tells readers:

Slide 3 of my PowerPoint file - click here to see the video

This lesson is designed to end with your students creating an "About Me" page on their student blogs. I want this page on their sites to be a good introduction to who they are, but I want them to understand that every type of writing has it's own style and intended audience. For all assignments, I go over the criteria for a successful _______ (in this case, the blank is filled in with About Me Page). Here is what the students are expected to include:

Slide 3 of my PowerPoint file - click here to see the video

I use rubrics in my class, both for summative assessment, as well as for students to edit and evaluate their own (or a classmate's) work. For this lesson, I give them a copy of the rubric they will use, and we practice evaluating some examples I made up. See the video for the sample pieces!

First, as with most writing, we want to create an outline. For this lesson, I created a brainstorming sheet to outline the student's writing. This is an easy way for me to see who needs help coming up with what to write, and who can work independently. The pic below is my daughter Ayla, doing the project for me as a template for my students! She still loves school, so she hasn't asked me to pay her yet! 

To make it easier for the students to organize their writing, I have them shade the parts that go in the introduction (Name, Age and Grade, Where I live, and Family) one colour, and the parts that go in the body (Activities, Favourites, When I grow up, Other facts) a second colour, and the last cloud (why I am writing a blog) a third colour. This makes it easy for them to keep it straight while they are writing. Ayla said "Oh! That makes it WAY easier! I think I'll do that from now on!" Excellent!

Once the kids are done their brainstorming clouds, it is time to write! I have a slide on the PowerPoint for each section of the writing, and we go through it step by step. Once they are better at writing, we wouldn't need to go this slowly for the whole class, but because this is early in the year, and follows a specific pattern, we go slow. Kids that are more advanced are free to get ahead of where we are, and I will help the kids who are finding it a challenge to keep up. 

The next step is to EDIT! I start the editing process right from day 1 with kids' writing. I want them to be clear that editing is just as important, if not more important, as the writing itself! For this lesson, I have prepared and editing checklist that the students can work through independently, with a partner, or with me. 

Once the autobiographies have been edited, and checked by me, we are ready for the FUN PART... Creating a page on the Student Blogs!

See my next POST for Part 3 of this lesson....

Student Blogging as Digital Portfolios- Part 1 -Rationale

Kids and computers go together like peas and carrots! In the world they are growing up in, computers are everywhere. They don't know a world without Google or iPads or Smartphones. Whether you feel like that is a good or a bad thing, it is the reality. We as teachers need to embrace that world in our teaching, or risk being left behind. It's as simple as that.

The last few months I have been taking a course through Athabasca University  called EDPY 480: Learning with Technology. It has been a lot of work, but amazingly valuable for me as an educator who strives to stay current and on top of Ed Tech. The course focuses on using technology to make learning more meaningful and authentic for students, which is a goal all teachers should be striving for! I don't ever want to hear my students ask: "Why do we have to learn this?"

I identified an area that my students struggle with, and chose Functional Writing. I wanted to design some lessons that would make this type of writing meaningful for my students, while teaching them to use technology that could be transferred to other activities. I teach a grade 2 class of around 20 students. Most students at our school would be familiar with technology such as computers, iPads or tablets, and may even have experience with social media. We have inclusive classrooms at our school, so students of all levels and abilities are together in the general classroom setting. Reading and writing are at varied levels at the beginning of the school year, with some students reading and writing well, and some very little. Using technology to read and write for a real purpose can help develop these important skills in my students.

ENTER DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS!

In her eBook Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades, Kathy Cassidy states that a “digital portfolio is richer in content, more comprehensive and much more revealing of the student's progress over time” (p. 64) than a paper portfolio. As soon as I began my research into creating student blogs, Kathy Cassidy's sites kept showing up on all the "Best of" lists! She is a Grade 1 teacher in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (right near my hometown!) and, quite frankly, she is amazing! She is an Apple Distinguished Educator, and has a hugely popular class blog, as well as her professional blog Primary Preoccupation and a group blog at Powerful Learning Practice. It was through her book that I developed my rationale for creating Digital Portfolios with my students this year! The world that my 7-year-olds will live in as adults is a hyper-connected one. Already my daughter feels like the dances she makes up aren't "real" unless they are on YouTube. Kids email their grandparents, not write letters. The internet puts all information right at their fingertips, if only they know how to find it! Learning how to be a part of the online world, in a responsible, safe, and interesting way, is an essential skill for this generation! As I was working on this blog post, I was listening to Ep 50 What are the Benefits of Student Blogging at TeachThought. It really helped solidify my own reasons for doing this! Students in this generation are going to have an online presence. That is simply inevitable. So doesn't it only make sense that we as teachers show them how to do it well? Lastly, back to my original learning problem, it is a type of Functional Writing that is likely the one they will use the most in their lives. 

Another benefit of a class blog and digital portfolios is that parents can keep up to date on their child’s progress as well as what is going on in our classroom. Students have a record of how far they have come over the course of the year, and I can use it to assess their progress as well. Win win win!

Okay, so you are thinking... "This sounds cool, but how do I get started?" 

First, I chose a blogging platform. I chose Edublogs because right away it seemed versatile and easy to use. Edublogs is powered by Wordpress, but is geared towards teachers and schools. This means that it has features that I was looking for in a class blog, such as ability to create a class list and student blogs tied to the main site, ability to monitor student activity as well as moderate comments. This is important, because I don't want to have to worry about inappropriate content on a class blog. I have had a class website on Weebly for years, so I am not entirely new to the process of creating a website. Creating one on Edublogs was super easy! Check out my video below for instructions.

Once that part is done, you are ready to start playing around with themes and widgets and other fun stuff! The best part is, if you don't want to spend a lot of time on it, your class blog could be almost ready to go AS IS!
The next step is to create a few pages on your class blog. The ones I have are:

1. Home (this is a default page on the menu)
2. About 2C
3. Contact us
4. Blogging Guidelines
5. How to Comment

I would definitely recommend having at least a Contact page, if nothing else. The rest is information for parents or other visitors, and also stuff I will be talking to the kids about as far as appropriate online identities and so on. 

Here is where I describe how to create Pages, including a Contact form:

Lastly, I adjusted the settings a bit. At my school, having an online presence is still very new. We have social media, but last year was the first year it was well used. Parents are still a bit skittish about having their kids online, and understandable so. Last year 1/8 of my students were not permitted to even be photographed. So I want to ease our community of parents into it, with strict privacy settings. As they see how valuable the process of having an authentic audience for their children, and see how safe the student and class blogs really are, I am hoping the audience can be wider for my students. But for now, we will not be "blasting pics of the kids all over the inter-web" as one parent once said to me. :)

Watch this video to see the few changes to privacy settings I made, as well as how to create a student blog. 

In my next post, I will be sharing my lesson plan on creating an Autobiographical statement for students to use on their About Me page on their Student Blogs! 

Pokémon Go Go Go

Owen has been into Pokémon since he was old enough to play video games. He has always been a "collector" by nature, and Pokémon is basically just a virtual collection in it's most basic form. Of course there is a lot more to it, but I can't even pretend to understand any of it. What I DO know is that Pokémon GO has taken my son off the couch and out to walk, bike ride, explore, and play. If someone had told me a video game would do that for him, I would have scoffed! But it has! He and Ayla even logged 10.5kms in one day! What?!?

So what exactly IS Pokémon GO, and why is it all I hear about lately? Why are there people on every street corner staring at their phones, and why are those pasty "haven't seen the sun in decades" types suddenly hiking the city streets? I looked it up, and got most of this information from LifeHacker, so for more detail, I suggest reading about it there. But here is my synopsis: Pokémon as a franchise is basically an alternate world where monsters of various types roam. A Pokémon Trainer (such as yourself) can find them, catch them, and train them. From there they can battle each other in "gyms" and become stronger. They also increase in CP (power), and can Evolve into other, better creatures. *I am well aware that my knowledge of Pokémon is extremely limited, no need to correct me, my son does that enough already. 

Pokémon Go is a free app for your phone (iPhone or Android) that you can simply download and start playing. There are in-app purchases, but I haven't looked into that at all, since I refuse to do so on principle. In the game, your phone's GPS is used to show you the real in an augmented reality. This means you see a real map of where you are, but things such as Pokémon, Pokéstops and Gyms are superimposed onto the maps. Clear as mud? When my kids started playing it, it all sounded like nonsense to me. ANDDD... then I downloaded it. It took no time at all to figure out (it is actually very similar to Geocaching if you have ever done that, except the "caches" are virtual creatures you get to keep and you don't have to leave anything in it's place). Now I, too, find myself checking my phone when I am out and about, just to see what's around. A trip to the library took me over an hour, because I walked all around the parking lot catching Pokémon and hitting Pokéstops! I only have 17 (and counting) Pokémon in my Pokédex so far, but I do get the appeal now!

Back to the kids.... Now that I understand it a bit more, I am even more on board with this game! 
Owen has even started taking pics of the Pokémon he finds, and trying to have creative and visually pleasing compositions. So not only is he getting fresh air and exercise, he is being creative too! Amazing. And free. 

Best of all? I can get my kids out for a day of fun, outdoor activity, with no complaining! 

Happy kids, Happy Mom.