Jan 28 2007
3 Conversations: #2 Blogging
So I am on to explaining about the second of three great conversations I had last week with colleagues at school.
Since starting my blog I wanted to draw more of my colleagues into the experience and I set my own targets for this, well I am a little late on it but I have still managed it. 
I had planned to support Claire and Rick, who work in Year 3, set up their blogs, but I decided to open out the session to other staff members and I had lots of takers! It was a chance to follow on the session I held before Christmas which was a great success and to tell them about setting up and getting on with the writing. After all that ’s what it is, an opportunity to write.
So we had Year 1, 2, 3, 4 and Year 6 teachers there - I had a meeting with Pete and Cathy about blogging the day before as they couldn’t make it, so that accounts for Year 5. So from a voluntary session I covered all of the Ks1-2 classes, to me that is very promising and I must say a big thankyou to those who attended and supported the session.
I introduced learnerblogs.org and explained the other platforms that are available to blog, the importance of getting running and just to write, I broke it into 3 simple sequential stages of usage that seemed pretty useful.
- Write together as a class using admin login on class blog.
- Assign children unique logins to write individually on the class blog.
- Children have their own blog to publish to and manage.
For many early years teachers it seemed that they would remain at 1 as their usage would be primarily writing together.
I am really pleased to see colleagues at school embracing the technology and many thanks to those who have already commented on the priestsic3 blog, I will keep you all posted of any more newborns in the ward.
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Hi Tom,
We left a comment on your new P3 Blog twice ….. but none have shown up on the blog? I’m also having trouble leaving comments on this blog at home and at school …. error messages appear saying that I must leave a name and email address - but comment box says I’m logged on already as p7teach. Anyway, I’ve logged into a computer at school using another password, so fingers crossed!
I really wanted to ask about your use of ‘Learner Blogs’. I’m hoping to train some P7 pupils to set up and run a general ‘School News Blog’. The templates for ‘edublogs’ and ‘learner blogs’ look the same. Are there advantages in using ‘Learner Blogs’ (will they find this easier to manage?).
Any advice appreciated!
I’ve also downloaded Skype at home and would love to try an experiment with your pupils and ours here at Carronshore…. need permission to download it at school, though. I’ll keep trying!
Hi Margaret
good to hear from you and thankyou for commenting on the new blogs we setup. All comments will be moderated so will appear when they have been approved, I will remind Claire to keep checking!
The main differences between Learnerblogs and Edublogs is the behind the scenes settings etc. The admin options for Learnerblogs is slightly more slimline and simpler, although having the same appearance. Edublogs does just offer a few extra settings eg “Privacy” and “Permalinks”, there is also a link to the Wikispace for Edublogs from the Dashboard.
The differences I would say are marginal and you would get an equally “able” blog from learnerblogs - there was a point when the actual suite of authoring tools was very different, but there is an equality there now.
Your thoughts on Skype are very apt as that is my #3 Conversation, look out for that soon - I would really like to take you up on the offer.