Forest Green School

A great visual for everyone before they post online.  Thanks to Royan Lee, an educator in Ontario, for the picture!

As we continue to develop understanding at Forest Green School regarding our eportfolio project, here is a video sharing how we have secured the student blogs as they are created:

This post was recently written on Tanya Paterson’s school blog and thought it would be great to share as we move into this world of blogging.

Our students have been working hard on setting up their blogs and learning how to change their themes, upload pictures, update and their blog roll’s, add blog categories, and now proper blog comment etiquette.

Etiquette:

(From: http://www.lostartofblogging.com/the-comment-etiquette-the-guide-to-proper-blog-commenting

and http://dariablack.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/the-bloggers-guide-to-comment-etiquette/)

Take into account:

Consistency — Value — Personality —

Keep it short — Opinion — Politeness –

Thoughtfulness — Comprehensiveness —

Lawfulness — Ignorance — Perspective –

and

Write a comment, not spam.

– avoid random comments like, “I was here first”, “I don’t agree”

Stay on topic.

– If you end up in a conversation through comments, perhaps move somewhere more private for discussion (like email for students you know).

Respect the rules.

– If the blog does not want comments, please avoid.

Comments should be comprehensible.

– Try to use proper spelling and grammar so the reader(s) understand it.

Keep it to a reasonable length.

– Not too long.

Link to your sources.

- When talking about or citing a source, be sure to include the link.

Responding to Comments:

– Show your appreciation —

– Respond to comments –

— Moderate your comments –

- don’t be rude, acknowledge your readers and reply back.

- even give thanks when appropriate.

- do not approve comments that are from people you don’t know if they are inappropriate or off topic, and keep your site spam free.

Here is a great video about public schools in New Brunswick and the direction they are heading.  What are you thoughts?

Here is some information for our staff on embedding a calendar using Google Apps into a blog post or page.  Hopefully this is helpful to other bloggers of the world.

As many of us are working with our own classroom blogs, we are doing some tutorials for blogging for staff and students.  Here is a video we created on making new pages:

I thought I would share some tools that we are or will be using to connect with students, parents, and each other that are Web 2.0 technologies (you are currently using 2 of them if you are reading this post). I encourage you to look at the sites and learn more about them when you have time.
1. Twitter – This is a great tool for connecting with other educators in the world and hopefully connecting with people in our community. I know that this is an amazing resource and I can always count on my PLN to help me out with almost anything (including hotels in Rome for my summer vacation!).
2. WordPress and Buddypress – We have tried everything from Kidblog to Edublogs in our school year (which are great services), but have decided to go with hosting our own blogs through WordPress.org. Part of the reason for this was that there are no advertisements on the free version and that we can host it on our own server. Through WordPress MU, we have the ability of the school to open and close any blogs that are connected to our site, while also providing an easy way for students and staff to create blogs through Buddypress. Buddypress creates an online community for our school where we can not only share ideas, blog posts, and have discussion, but also have a way that we can connect with our entire school community including parents. We are excited about what these two sites can do for our school and how we will be able to connect and communicate.
3. Diigo – Many at our school have been using Diigo as a way to share their favourite bookmarks with students and staff. It is a great social bookmarking site where you are able to highlight, comment, and share links. Instead of continuously sharing links, one after another on the same topic, it is easy to just send ONE link that will continuously update and house links (for example, here is a list of SmartBoard links I have created throughout the year). It is a great and easy way to bookmark sites for students and staff.
4. Drop.io – We looked at adding USB sticks for kids on their supply lists, but decided to use this service instead to easily store student files. Some students in our school may not have Internet access so the school can provide USB sticks for them, but drop.io is easy enough to store files that can be downloaded and uploaded from any place that has access to the Internet. If we can alleviate financial costs for students, why wouldn’t we?
5. Google Apps – Looking at how students could have email, we ended up going with Google Apps. This does not only give students email but also opens up the use of Google Docs, Google Calendar, and other services that Google Apps offers. The main reason we started with Google Apps for next year was that it provided free email, but it definitely can provide so much more in the future.

If you have any questions about these applications or websites, please do not hesitate to ask!