DFI / Share with Blogs

This week in DFI we were working in our Digital Bubbles to explore blogs and build an infographic about one student's blog.

The class that Manvi is in blog regularly now that they have been set up last year as new bloggers. An infographic about Manvi's blog is below

So why do we get students to blog? 

Blogging is a great way for student's to share their learning. Blogs can be used to teach, inform and/or reflect. 

Students can develop unique and creative content all the while connecting with others. We always talk about writing and having authentic audiences - well here is a way to provide that audience. 

Students can practice their communication and conversation skills when they comment on others' postings or reply to others' feedback on their blogs. Blogging can also help students be positive, thoughtful and helpful when commenting and provide feedback for others.

I have always liked this image from Langwitches. Silvia Rosenthal-Tolisano is a strong advocate of blogging and writes a lot about blogging and the advantages of blogging.

Summer Learning Journey

 The Summer Learning Journey (SLJ) is a programme run in all Manakaiakalani clusters in response to the summer slump which sees the achievement levels of students plummet over the long summer break. Students are given daily tasks to do then share them on their blog. This integration of literacy and other curriculum areas keeps them engaged in reading and writing in particular.

Every blog post is read and commented on my a team of commenters. Points are awarded and when school returns in February we will have prizes to present.

Many students in our cluster registered and have been blogging through the summer break. Below is Kylah's blog post that earned her bonus points. If you want to leave a comment about the post below you will find it here.

Gravity Defying Bucket and Cup Trick 

Today for summer learning journey Nanogirl task I made a gravity defying bucket and did a cup trick that meant I could turn the cup over and the water didn't escape!

I decided to make and edit a video on how to make the bucket. I really enjoyed making the first video about Tolaga Bay, I decided to try editing another video using Movavi.
Both tasks were nice and simple to follow. My favourite of the two was the cup flip trick. I thought I was going to make a mess all over the table! The cup and card trick is pretty cool! I wanted to know why it worked. It's to do with air pressure! With the card there is no air being pushed into the water so the water stays in the cup upside down! pretty cool huh! I have sort of discovered the bucket trick before by accident once when I spun my drink bottle in a circle and no water came out.

I'm getting better at editing my videos and it was easier to work out what to do. I didn't even need my Mum to guide me this time! I had to split the audio to the video lots of times to make the volume higher when it was going into time lapses and lower when I was talking so you could still hear me over the music. Next time if I was do do this task again I would make the string slightly shorter because I had to have it wrapped around my hand lots of times because I had made it too long. I would also make sure I was doing a task when my little brother wasn't around. He tried to grab the scissors!

 

Here are my videos.

   

   

Blogging Tips: Labels

Labels for blogs are a must. They are effectively the index to your blog just as the blog archive is the table of contents.
Labels for student blogs should be curriculum areas such as reading, writing, maths, art, inquiry, technology, computational thinking etc. These labels should be added to the first blog post by the Blog Admin so that they are already listed for students to choose form. 
Students tend to put in all the main ideas in their labels and this defeats the purpose of labels which is to group blogs and make the posts searchable. 
At this week's DFI Kerry shared with us Blogging Tips: Labels and the gem in this was the table for labels for professional blogs.

STP1	Te Tiriti o Waitangi Partnership
STP2	Professional Learning
STP3	Professional Relationships
STP4	Learning-focused Culture
STP5	Design for Learning
STP6	Teaching

These are from the Standards for the Teaching Profession

Why Blogs?

This question comes up all the time in our work as facilitators with The Manaiakalani Programme.

So why do we choose Blogger as the platform for Share | Tohatoha? 

Many years ago I visited Pt England School and saw the way blogging was used with learners. On return to my school I got stuck in and get students blogging. We followed a lot of the guidelines on Edublogs and joined in with their challenges. We also joined Quad Blogging and interacted with schools in USA and UK. It was fun especially when we had a competition to see who could get visitors to their blog form different countries and who could get the most visitors.

I read the Langwitches blog by Silvia Tolisano and she is a strong advocate of blogging. Not just blogging by learners but she advocates for teachers to blog FOR their students.

My main reason for learners to blog is the way a whole bunch of skills come together such as writing skills, reading skills, metacognition skills and reflection skills to name a few.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/PCpNZhaoK8tUZDcoDByLkW-650-80.jpeg

Sharing by blogging is core to what we do in The Manaiakalani Programme. We have systems and processes to develop blogging with teachers and students and are able to provision this legally, systematically, and securely under the GSuite owned by each school's BoT so they can share with purpose.

So why should we blog?  I firmly believe that blogging gives the quietest learners a voice, a place to document their learning and to connect with others.