Tech+Activities++Creating+a+Blog

CREATING A BLOG ====Literacy is an essential 21st century skill, and every subject requires students to communicate their learning through some form of analytical, creative, or expository writing. Despite their reluctance to complete formal writing assignments in school, 85% of middle and high school students enthusiastically send text messages, email, or post comments on social networking sites. (Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith & Macgill, 2008). Providing an authentic, real world audience for student writing both empowers and engages students; by design blogs and social learning networks encourage written communication.==== ====A blog is a type of webpage that enables the author to post personal comments on a topic. Blogs support text, images, links to audio and video files and links to other blogs on similar topics. Blogs become interactive writing tools when bloggers post their ideas and others respond either by commenting on the original blog posting or in other blogs with a link to the original posting. (Duffy & McDonald, 2011). “The implications [of blogs] for students include writing about issues and thus improving writing skills, learning from each other, thinking through topics thoroughly enough to offer an opinion or add information, peer editing, finding a community of others interested in the same topic and becoming confident in sharing what they know.” (Solomon & Schrum, 2007) In this assignment you will develop a blog to support student communication for students in a grade level and subject you plan to teach.====

**Step Two**
Decide on the purpose and users of the blog. For example, this blog may be for an eleventh grade US History class that is studying World War I. Each day students log onto the blog to read and respond to the historical event of the day. Students are assigned one of seven countries and respond to the historical event from the perspective of that country. Students do research using links on the blog to ensure historical accuracy of their blog posting.
 * Step Three.**
 * § Choose a blog website, e.g., [] or [|http://www.blogger.com]
 * § Sign up to create an account if you do not have one, or log in if you already have an account. Both Edublogs and Blogger have extensive help menus. Blogger is part of the Google suite. Edublogs provides free accounts for educators. For a small monthly fee, Edublogs provides enhanced teacher blogs that have greater storage capacity, additional features, and allow the teacher to create student blogs.

These directions are for Edublogs. Blogger uses similar steps.


 * § Create the blog domain, e.g., xxxx.edublogs.com and the blog title, e.g., Ms.X classroom blog. The domain name should be fairly simple and the blog title should be descriptive of the blog’s purpose. Also choose the blog type, e.g., teacher.


 * § Create your first posting; this can be a brief introduction to the blog. Upload an image to the page from the Internet (use Creative Commons images. http://creativecommons.org) or your photo library.


 * § Select the privacy settings: If you have middle school students or students who are unfamiliar with blogs and online communication etiquette, keep the blog private. If your students are older and blog savvy, you may want to make the site password protected.


 * § You may choose a publishing date or save the blog page as a draft. Next click “preview”.


 * § Choose the look and feel of the site. In Edublogs the “Appearance” tab lets you select themes, configure widgets, add a background and a header. There are a variety of themes, and you can preview each one. When you have chosen a theme, click “activate”.


 * § Next configure widgets, which are small applications that add functionality to the blog. The free Edublog enables you to place links to the archives, additional pages, links to additional resources, a wiki, and recent comments in the sidebar. The archives widget organizes posts on the blog by month. The categories widget organizes posts into different topics.


 * § Add new pages based on the blog’s theme and include discussion questions to prompt student posts to the blog.


 * § Add new media or links to documents on the pages you create.


 * § The “Add New User” feature enables you to add students as subscribers, authors, or contributors.


 * § Finally you are ready to share the blog. __For the purpose of this assignment, include my user name and email address: thiemag thiemag@pdx.edu__

Using the Evaluating Blogs rubric, review your blog. After saving any final changes, upload the URL of your blog to the wiki page BELOW the rubric.
 * Step Four**

Burgess,R_Blog [|Art Music Listening] Ott,M_Blog [|Geiger,R_Blog]
 * Criteria || 3 Exemplary || 2 Satisfactory || 1 Needs Improvement ||
 * Purpose and Theme || The blog has a clear purpose and theme. Every post from the teacher and prompt to reply by students clearly relate to the blog theme. || The purpose and theme of the blog are somewhat vague. A few pages do not relate well to the theme. || The blog lacks a clear purpose and theme. Pages and topics for posting are unrelated to the theme ||
 * Organization || The blog is very well organized and easily navigated. Pages are clearly identified, posts are archived by date and categorized by topic. || The blog is organized and mostly easy to navigate. Some posts may not be clearly archived or categorized. || The blog is unorganized. The sidebar does not list pages, and posts are not archived by date or categorized by topic. ||
 * Voice || Blog postings show clear evidence of the teacher’s and/or students’ voice. || Sometimes the teacher or student voices are inconsistent or unclear. || Neither the teacher nor student voices are clear in blog postings. ||
 * Higher Order Thinking || Teacher posts and prompts to reply invite students to interpret, analyze, evaluate, and/or state well developed opinions. || Teacher posts and prompts to reply include some opportunity for higher order thinking. || Teacher posts and prompts to reply do not prompt higher order thinking. ||
 * Multimedia || The blog includes high quality graphics, sound, or video that relate to the theme and enhance reader interest or understanding || The graphics, sound, or video are of average quality and relate to the theme but do not enhance reader interest or understanding || No multimedia are used or they are of poor quality, do not relate to the theme and distract the reader. ||
 * Sources || The blog includes a rich variety of high quality, credible sources that are correctly cited || The blog includes a variety of sources, although a few are not high quality or are not cited correctly || The blog includes only a few sources which are poor quality and not cited. ||
 * Links || All links connect correctly to age-appropriate, high quality sites including other blogs related to the theme || Most of the links connect to age-appropriate, high quality sites related to the theme. There are few if any links to relevant blogs || The blog has no links or the links are age-inappropriate or unrelated to the theme ||
 * Conventions || The blog has no misspellings or grammatical errors || The blog has a few misspellings or grammatical errors that do not interfere with the reader’s comprehension. || The blog has many spelling and grammatical errors that interfere with the reader’s comprehension ||
 * Communication || The blog is explicitly designed to promote communication by students. || The intent of the blog is to promote student communication but it is unclear how this will happen. || The blog is not designed to promote student communication. ||

[|Mountain, A_Blog]

[|Stager,N_Blog]

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