Category: Blogging

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Charlie:

Jacqui, I’m curious about one aspect of blogging with students as a computer lab teacher. That aspect is efficiently managing so many students blogs. I teach grades 2 and 3 which adds up to over 600 students in 25 classes. When you only see each class once per week, blogging could easily be the basis of the entire year’s curriculum. We are a GAFE district but Blogger is blocked. For that reason and ease of management I decided upon Kidblog. So, I am curious how you manage the different classes and numbers of students as a lab teacher. Do you for example have the “all posts must be approved before going live” turned on? What is your username/password convention? Do you use the invitation method of registering student accounts or bulk upload? BTW, do you have a reference that you utilize/like in terms of the teaching progression for teaching blogging?

Here are five more of the blogs I read to get inspired, motivated, re-energized:

• Cybraryman–a massive resource of materials curated by a teacher. You don’t want to miss this one.
• Diary of a Public School Teacher–this blog will warm your heart. Lisa is upbeat, hard-working, and authentically integrates technology into her students’ days. I love reading her story.
• EdTechSandy–Sandy is one of those educators that seems to have her finger on the trends that drive technology in education. I often visit her blog to orient my thinking, see what I’ve missed at Geographically-Undesirable conferences and center my pedagogy. Here’s her bio:

  I am a professional educator with 18 1/2 years of experience in education. My areas of interest include teaching with technology, educator professional development, online blended & distance learning, social media in education, and digital citizenship. I want to build bridges between thinkers in the cloud and teachers in the classroom.

• FreeTech4Teachers–Richard covers everything from great websites to conferences he’s attended to–of course–lots of free tech. He won the Edublog award for best blog (in various categories) for about four years running. What a wealth of resources he makes available. Here’s his bio:

The purpose of this site is to share information about free resources that teachers can use in their classrooms.

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I’m paranoid of losing my documents so I back them up to an external drive, a flash drive, and in the cloud. My blog, though–It’s become an important cog in my writer’s creds. If it blew up, I’d be lost. What do I do about backing it up?

A: If you use Wordpress, it’s easy. Here’s what you do:

• Go to Tools>Export
• Select the bubble for ‘all’
• It’ll back it up as an XML file (you don’t have to understand what that is. Just know it’s the file that will save you if Wordpress crashes)
• Save that backup file somewhere safe in case you need it. Preferably where your Cloud automatic back-up will grab it (assuming you have one of those. If you use Carbonite, you do)
• Do this once a month–or a week if you’re active

My business website is a Wordpress theme with a ton of widgets. I can back it up exactly the same. Which I do, even though it has an automatic back-up.

That’s it. Now you’re safe.

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Every year, millions of people worldwide create New Year’s resolutions. In my experience, keeping these goals will happen when Harvard wins the Super Bowl (I used to say when Notre Dame plays for the National Championship, but I had to revise my metrics). In fact, according to Randi Walsh at Empower Network:

• … 25% give up on their New Years Resolutions after just one week?
• … 80% give up on their New Years Resolutions after 20 days?
• … only 8% actually keep their New Years Resolutions all year?

Here’s an example: On a group blog I write with, we were all asked to share our resolutions with the Universe in January, then check in throughout the year on our progress. No one in the entire group–read that Zilch.–had achieved theirs (well, I did, which made our group 8%). The reasons were varied and lame and left me wondering why create resolutions if you so quickly brush them aside?

Why? It makes people feel good. They want to believe their lives will be better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning. Let’s look at the top four resolutions (according to Amber J. Tresca at About.com):

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I include lots of links for my readers to places that will help them integrate technology into their education. They cover websites on lesson plans, math, keyboarding, classroom management, cloud computer, digital books, teacher resources, free tech resources, and more. On any given day, I generate on average 810 of these ‘click throughs’. Which links my readers select tells me a lot about the type of information they’re looking for.

Here’s a list of the top ten sites visitors selected from my blog:

1. itunes.apple.com–last year the top click-through was a website. This year, teachers are looking for apps for iPads.
2. libraryspot.com–there’s a big uptick in using the Internet for research this year over last year
3. Structuredlearning.net–lots of teachers are finding books/ebooks here for integrating tech into the classroom
4. abcya.com–a popular site with classroom edutainment
5. factmonster.com–more research for class projects
6. kids.nationalgeographic.com–still more research. I’m seeing a trend
7. bigbrownbear.co.uk/keyboard/–One of my favorite sites to teach K/1 how to type
8. brainpop.com–great collection of videos and games on almost every topic

What do I conclude from this? Where last year, the top sites revolved around keyboarding, this year it’s research. Second, you want information on managing the classroom–that’s the wikis and the Internet start pages. I hear you. Check back this new year and see what I come up with.

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When PhDs notice what I’m doing over here, I am honored. So when I heard that Ask a Tech Teacher came in fourth in the Top 25 Education Technology Sites in 2012, I just had to share the news.

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Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

As we roll into a new year, recommitting to goals of improved writing and collaborating on learning, here’s a great question I got from Chaya:

I’d like to help my teachers start class blogs, but would love some kind of document on policies such as what to post/not to post, what needs passwords, etc. I’d like to get the student work out there while continuing to protect their safety and privacy.

Thanks!

I spent some time digging into what most people are using. Turns out, there’s a list that seems pretty good adapted from Academy of Discovery wiki wiki. Everywhere I checked, this is the list I got (often, personalized to the school’s unique situation):

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Here are five more of the blogs I read to get inspired, motivated, re-energized:

• Cybraryman–a massive resource of materials curated by a teacher. You don’t want to miss this one.
• Diary of a Public School Teacher–this blog will warm your heart. Lisa is upbeat, hard-working, and authentically integrates technology into her students’ days. I love reading her story.
• EdTechSandy–Sandy is one of those educators that seems to have her finger on the trends that drive technology in education. I often visit her blog to orient my thinking, see what I’ve missed at Geographically-Undesirable conferences and center my pedagogy. Here’s her bio:

  I am a professional educator with 18 1/2 years of experience in education. My areas of interest include teaching with technology, educator professional development, online blended & distance learning, social media in education, and digital citizenship. I want to build bridges between thinkers in the cloud and teachers in the classroom.

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When I started this blog three years and 657 posts ago, I wasn’t sure where to take it. I knew I wanted to connect with other tech teachers so I used that as the theme. Now, thanks to the 491,000+ people who have visited, I know much more about the ‘why’. It’s about getting to know kindred souls, but there is so much more I’ve gotten from blogging. Like these:

How to write

We bloggers divide ourselves into two categories: 1) those who write short, under-1000-word posts and 2) those who write in-depth, lengthy articles. I’ve chosen the former. I like pithy ideas that my readers can consume in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. As a result, I’ve learned to be frugal with my words. I choose verbiage that conveys more than one-word’s-worth of information and I leave tangential issues for another post. Because I realize readers are consuming on the run, I make sure to be clear–no misplaced pronouns or fuzzy concepts like ‘thing’ or ‘something’.

Prove my point

This part of writing transcends what print journalists must do. Yes, they do it, but my readers expect me to support ideas with interactive links to sources. If I’m reviewing a tech ed concept, I link to other websites for deeper reading. That’s something that can’t happen in paper writing. Sure, they can provide the link, but to put the paper down, open the laptop, copy that link–I mean, who does that? In a blog, I get annoyed if someone cites research and doesn’t provide the link.

Listen

When I write an article, I cross post to other parts of my PLN, sometimes to ezines I contribute to in other parts of the world.

And then I listen. What are readers saying? What are their comments/suggestions to me? Often, I learn as much from readers as what I thought I knew when I wrote the article.

For example, I get many emails from tech ed professionals with questions about our field. I used to answer them based on my experience. Now, I have my Dear Otto series where I share my thoughts and solicit input from readers. Wow–have I learned a lot from that! The flipped blog–teacher becomes student.

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I’d like to claim that I pick topics of paramount importance in the tech ed community, the pinnacle of edtech conversations and just must be talked about.But that’s not true. I select the topics that interest my readers. It’s a pull-through approach rather than push-through.

You-all communicate what you’d like to read about in several ways:

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