What is TeachMeet06?

Learn something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. This is an informal gathering of those curious about technologies.
Anyone can share cool ideas they have or great ideas they’ve triallled in their classrooms. Join us in person or via Skype.
We want things that have succeeded and which have failed. Whatever it takes to further the knowledge of the education community.

More details 

A few blogs ago I wrote about a school which had complained about lack of comments and the excellent response they had.

This has encouraged the school to start their own blog. The present primary 7 have, in their last week at school, started the Muirfield School blog. They have spoken about the blog at a school assembly and on the last day of the term (tomorrow) they are going to train next year’s primary 7 class how to run the blog so that it will continue after the holiday. the present primary 7 kids hope to make guest appearances on the blog describing their experences when they start secondary school.

The Introduction to Blogging in the Classroom course is now complete. That doesn’t mean it’s finished, just that there’s enough there for people to use. It’s open to anyone. It can be worked through from start to finish or dipped into as required.
Tonight I’ll probably add an evaluation at the end so that users can contribute to the development of the course.

I’ve resisted the impulse to do something on podcasting as I think once people have the hang of blogging, they’re likely to have the confidence to try to find out about podcasting for themselves.

I’m putting together a MOODLE course on Blogging for teachers who’ve heard about it but don’t know where to start.

I’m at a stage where I’d welcome comments on things to amend/add/omit.

The course can be found at

http://www.abernet.org.uk/courses/course/enrol.php?id=35

You can login as a guest using the enrolment key – fastnbulbous.

I look forward to hearing your views.

Usually the only reason I remove the plastc wrapper from a GTC publication is so that it can go straight in the recycled paper bin. However, this latest one caught my eye as it featured blogging. Not only did it feature blogging, it featured it positively. Not only did it feature it positively, the articles were written by weel kent scottish bloggers of repute!

This blessing of blogging appears in a publication which goes to every Scottish teacher so is bound to provoke even more interest and activity.

The articles can be read here.

Let’s hope that this ‘official’ recognition of the value of blogging continues apace.

The Reading Bus is an unusual project which aims to use technologies old and new to encourage literacy in families in a socially disadvantaged area of Aberdeen.

Here is a piece from their website -

“The Reading Bus is a bold and innovative project in the City of Aberdeen, North East Scotland. Funds are in place to convert a single decker bus into a high profile, mobile learning resource that will work with cross-agency partners. The aim of the project is to raise achievement in literacy, particularly in areas of high social deprivation, by working with families as a learning unit. The pilot project begins August 2006 in St Machar Community and will later be rolled out across the remainder of the City.” Aberdeen City Council is helping The Reading Bus go places.”

On the 16th May 2006 children from the schools involved created a radio show which was broadcast on a local community radio station.The 60 minute show – all 30MB of it – can be dowloaded here.

This is a very interesting project which is worth following on the website.

Yesterday I went to visit the school which had instigated a flood of comments on the P7 Wrting blog by complaining that they weren’t getting comments. There were only about ten children in the class when I visited because many of them were visiting the secondary school that they will be attending next session.

They had spent the morning reading the comments and charting where the comments came from – France, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, etc – and were clearly very excitied by what had happened. They were delighted with the response and amazed that adults from all over the world would spend time commenting on what they’d written. It made them feel important.

We chatted about blogging in general and one point that they brought up delighted me. They were suddenly very conscious that often they just wrote something quickly and posted it without checking for errors but they felt slightly embarrassed that these errors were being read all over the world. One of my hopes for this kind of project was that the sense of audience would encourage just this kind of reaction. We discussed strategies for checking work and moved on to where they wanted to go next with blogging. These children only have another 4 weeks together as they will move on to different secondary schools after the summer break.

I had some ideas in mind for things they might want to blog about but didn’t get much of an opportunity to put these ideas forward because the kids knew what they wanted. They wanted a blog for their school. They’d seen the Sandaig blog and thought that they could do something similar. They thought that in four weeks they could get a blog started and train some primary 6 pupils to carry on the blog next session.

I said I’d be happy to set up a blog just for them iso they will be discussing with their classmates what name to have for their blog, what they’ll put on it when it starts up and how they’ll train the younger children.

For these children, the few weeks of involvement in blogging has proved an empowering experience which has increased their self-confidence.

This is exactly what I had hoped that blogging might do for kids in school.

Yesterday afternoon I posted a plea for some comments to be added to our Primary 7 Writing Blog. At the same time I faxed a number of local schools with a similar plea for help.

By 5 pm today, every post in the P7 blog had at least one comment and most had several. Where did all these comments come from? Not from our local schools – I hope that we’ll see some activity from them over the next few days – but from fellow bloggers out there who gave their time to add supportive, and often very perceptive, comments.

My thanks to a trio of regular Scottish bloggers who immediately rallied round – John, Ewan and Andrew. I think the mention on Ewan’s site probably brought in a number of overseas commentators from the USA and France. In particular, I’m indebted to Nancy McKeand from Louisiana who throughout the day posted no fewer than 17 comments!

This is a great example of how there is a real community spirit within the blogging fraternity. (Fraternity – is that politically correct?).

Thanks to everyone out there who helped. I’m looking forward to see how the kids react.

Having given details of one of the teachers who worked on website of materials and web links I have discovered that the other teacher has also produced  a great site at http://del.icio.us/forehill with nearly 500 links. Both teachers started the sites but other teachers in the schools contribute to them.

Can you help?

Some primary 7 pupils in Aberdeen have  been posting stories and poems on their blog. They would like to have more comments from other schools.

If you go to http://www.abernet.org.uk/wp/ you’ll see the Primary 7 blogs.

As you’ll see, some stories don’t have any comments at all so if your pupils can spare the time to add comments they’d be much appreciated.

If you would like our children to comment on your blogs, just ask.

Looking forward to reading your comments.