Blogging with Students - A Powerful Literacy Activity

Using blogs with students is still a hot topic.

Sue Waters posted this earlier in the year. It is a guest post by Kathleen McGeady.

Students needed to be skilled to make contributions to class blogs. Providing guidelines or scaffolds to ensure that student comments are of good quality is a starting point that will contribute much to student literacy development.

Blogging in class is about literacy and learning.

Particularly, at the secondary level, if students are to learn (content and skills) from having their own blogs, then the process needs to be scaffolded by each teacher to suit the learning outcomes of individual subjects or key learning areas.

A model reflecting the types of texts that students need to succeed in each subject will ensure maximum improvements in reading and writing skills.

The ifactor - ipods, iphones - giving learning a hand

There will be many more links for this topic and discussion about some other gadgets will intersect with this debate.

The article Tuning in to Technology reports on the ipod: Take My Teacher Home Program.

Keeping in Touch ipod touch program.

iphone in Education evernote links

Walnut Schools adds ipod touch to 3Rs

Smart Boards, iPods shove aside chalkboards

Schools adjust how writing is taught in text age.

So, what about books? Silvia Tolisano writes about the potential impact of ebook readers.

Literacies for Learning - Part 2

This is a very roughly cobbled together post to follow my previous compilation post.

Written by Tim, on SansBlogue: Participatory Pedagogy and Cultural Literacy

What are the New Media Literacies
Read the blog, download papers, watch the video.

Visual literacy activity on John Hendron's TechTimes Blog.

Jamie Madson blog belonging to Rockford Middle School absolute focus on digital literacy skill development.

Liz Kolb has written: 21st Century Skills are Educators and Executives aligned

Karl Fisch of the Fischbowl blog wrote Shifting toward new literacy in which he references a Will Richardson post.

Darren Draper wrote Edublogger Etiquette a useful post that gives insights as suggested.

The Great Literacy Debate written by Ryan Bretag references many of the most prominent posts in this global discussion.

New post from Doug Belshaw, referencing the writing of Gunther Kress on literacy:

Dan Willingham writes Teaching Content is Teaching Reading.

This conversation is still evolving in the twitterverse and blogosphere.

Following those referred to my two posts will link you into some current important players in the debate.

Literacies for Learning

This has been another hot topic in the twitterverse and blogosphere over the last year. The conversation has been wide-ranging and brought to light diverse and often contested views.

From the basics of: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Literacy has become literacies and a range of descriptors have been used, including: digital, information, media, new media, 21st century to identify a few. The notion of skills, competencies and fluencies have occasionally been referenced.

For this topic, I am looking back before moving forward to devise plans and goals for 2009.

These are some posts that have contributed to the conversation over the year:

Doug Belshaw on literacy using his digital literacy tag or his Ed.D. thesis references and more recently his post: The problem/s of 21st century literacy/ies.

Kim Cofino wrote: What is literacy?

John Connell wrote on visual literacy

Ben Grey wrote on his blog, The Edge of Tomorrow: 21st Century Confusion

Elizabeth Helfant wrote in her blog, Helcat Rants and Ramblings: Defining Emerging Literacies

Elizabeth Holmes on jog the web: What are 21st Century Skills?

Jenny Luca put together: Literacy for our age

Jo McLeay wrote: Blogging as a literacy practice.

Mike Romard wrote: Information Literacy for lower elementary students

Toni Twiss wrote in her Upwardly Mobile blog: Information Literacy

Edwin Wargo wrote on his blog, The Brute Thing: Literacy: Back to the Basics

Patrick Woessner contributed: 21st Century Information Literacy

The New Literacies

Principles for New Media Literacy

The 21st Century Information Fluency provides some interesting resources.

I am making this post a work in progress.

As a reference point: #literacyconversation

Where to for student and teaching blogging 2009? - Part 1

On Twitter in 2008, we experienced a feast of tweets about teacher, student, class, leader blogging. There were competitions, challenges and all manner of tips for current effective practice professional and student blogging.

Here is a selection of posts I identified through Twitter. Many of these edubloggers have multiple posts on blogging effective practice.

tasteach aka Sue Wyatt and Sue Waters initiated and sustained a brilliant global student blogging competition. Student friends on Bringing us Together blog. Planning is on for 2009.

Sue Waters also launched the Improving your Blogging with the 31 Day Project. She is looking to something in 2009 also.

In her latest post she references Steve Dembo's 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger.

educationau's Blogging Corner an edna group managed by Kerrie Smith and Alison Hall ran a successful blogging project in 2008 and has plans to launch the Blogging Corner Carnival in 2009. Check out the website and prepare for the adventure.

Anne Davis wrote: Rationale for educational blogging

David Warlick has contributed Why blog?

A case for using blogs in education

The langwitches blog of Sylvia Tolisano provided some very useful lesson plan guidelines for teachers on scaffolding student blog comments.

Tom Barrett wrote: Blog post instructions

For the new school year in NZ, in a web 2.0 tools for writers teacher training session, more ideas for successful blogging are provided.

Some benefits of blogging have been articulated in the following posts:

Paul Bogush wrote in his blog: How has writing for a world wide audience changed the way you write?

Jose Picardo has written in his excellent blog: How to start you own class or subject blog

Carla Arena has written Blogging away

The blogging cycle and a number of additional links to other relevant posts.

Blogging 101

Teacher blogs for a District approach.

Teacher Weblogs

Blogs by subject

Blogs and blogging- wiki lists

Stephen Downes wrote: Grading blogging

Blog grade rubric

Clay Burell wrote: Blogger training school for a student blogging license. A silver bullet?

Maggie Giev has prepared the SlideShare presentation. Blogging for teaching and Learning

Graham Wegner wrote Reviewing our 2008 student blogs

Anne Mirtschin wrote about the problems and potential of Live Blogging in Education

The business world is also very interested in the value of blogging to the bottom line.

Business- 10 reasons to find a blog buddy and The Psychology of Blogging

Let's hear it for the blog - an interview with Tom Peters and Seth Godin provides a business perspective to blogging.

The 48 Laws of Power Applied to blogging and Blogging is like going to the gym ... for your brain

Learning from Great Blog Conversationalists

25 tips to make a blog work

These are just a sampling of posts. Let me know of the great ones I have missed in a comment.