Blogging Exemplars

I’ve had some conversations over the last few days with some 486ers about what “counts” as a good blog. In the spirit of sharing and highlighting some good work, here are some examples of your awesome blogging situated in the expectations of the class rubric:

1. Integration of Voices – Alicia

• This post is a great example of Alicia struggling with both grant writing and inquiry and finding support in the community of learners. The post spurred additional comments, kept the dialogue going from multiple perspectives, and prompted tangential thoughts on other blogs. If you happen to frequent the world of EduBlogging, you’ll find some highly linked blogs and a rich community of teacher-learners out there on the interweb.

2. Investment Over Time – Andrea

• This blog is a good example of writing that is done frequently and thoughtfully. Our class does not seem to have a dearth of things to write and think about, and it’s really a strength of this community. It’s easy to post a lot, but to post frequent, thoughtful musings is another thing entirely. Keep up the great work in this area. It’s obvious that so many of you care so deeply about what we’re doing here.

3. Breadth of Issues Addressed – Kathryn

• Much thinking about a variety of topics: student engagement, teacher/student interactions, both personal and professional planning, higher education experiences as they relate to social justice, personal reflections, and professional development. Again, think back to the rope metaphor. Professional growth means critically looking at all aspects our identities as they change over time within different contexts.

4. Support for Claims and Opinions. – Suzanne

• Part of good reflection means situating learning within the larger constructs and relevant research. This post by Suzanne does that by relating (and critiquing) interpersonal experiences with the larger social norms that shape those relationships. By not separating things into their various parts, she is able to present an ecological perspective, and it’s much richer because of that.

5. Critical Considerations. – Lisa

• In this post Lisa begins to bring up the notion of what social justice looks like in an inquiry classroom and the interplay between theory and practice in learning. It’s a really great start to a larger conversation and should definitely be expanded on, especially in terms of how technology plays into different educational environments.

6. Capitalizing on Features of Blogs. – Chris

• The cool thing about setting up a unique blog format is that you can really let it be whatever works best for you and your readers. Chris has set up some interesting functions on his page (tag clouds, current readings, random science nerdiness, etc.) and it strengthens the other posts because it keeps it interesting for the readers and informs while still remaining professional.

Personally, I don’t always follow a strict format with blog posts. Usually I just write to get things out of my head and into a forum where those thoughts can be publicly challenged. And keep the rope in the back of your mind. It’s really the thoughtful wrestling with complexity that matters…

Trackbacks – Another Tech Tip about Blogging

->  After you read this (or before if you don’t care about trackbacks), make sure you keep scrolling down to the last post to see the cool graph that Joe posted.

     My favorite thing about blogging is the conversation and I’m always trying to think of new ways to get everybody talking and see what everybody else has to say.    I thought I’d post a bit of info on trackbacks which can help people follow a conversation around our blogworld.

     When you talk about somebody else in a general way, it’s fun to include a link to their blog;  this is a link a reader can follow but provides neither a trackback or a ping.     If you are referencing something another blogger said in a specific post, it’s helpful to make your link a trackback to that post which causes two things to happen:

1. It posts a small portion of your blog post around and including the text with the link in the comments section of the other person’s post.
2. It sends the other blogger an e-mail saying that you referenced their post.   I think this is the ping part but somebody else can correct me if I have the vocabulary wrong.

To find the trackback URL for their post, I go to their blog and click on the specific post that I am referencing (this brings it up so you can see all the comments) and the URL that is in your browser heading is the trackback URL.   It will look like the regular url with the specific blog reference (such as teacherkathrynj) but it will also have something like /p=5 or /post-title-with-dashes or something else.  That is what you need to copy as a link to make the trackback happen.

     Anyway, it’s a nice way to make sure that the conversations that move around our blogworld have some connections.    You can e-mail me if something about this isn’t clear or log in and correct it – our class blog is kind of like a wiki that way.

     Here’s a link to a comic strip about blogging which Joe posted on his blog but kind of fits with this post about me and my blogging fixation.

Blog Reader Applications

I highly recommend setting up some sort of feed aggregator/reader for all the blogs in the class.  Wikipedia has a list of common readers here.  Personally, I use Google Reader and find it to be awesome for making blog reading more efficient.

And if you’re looking for some good blogs to check out, here’s a list I published a while back.  Enjoy.

WordPress and Blog Addresses

Hey everyone,

So here’s my little lesson on the addresses to your blog….if you mess with them, you blow up your blog.

But seriously, from the dashboard go to Settings on the right hand side.  It will open up the General tab.  On this tab are options to change your blog’s name and add a clever line below the name on your blog’s main page.

Right below the tagline section are two sections named WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL).  These addresses point to the server space that houses our blogs.  If you change them, this messes up the connection and you or anyone else are unable to access your blog.  Trust me, I did it.  I thought I could change the teacherthomasp name to something that I liked.  Fortunately, by screwing it up, whoever fixed it did change the server file information, so in the end I got what I wanted.  Maybe there is a legit way to do this???

Custom Image Headers

Thanks Chris!   I was trying to figure out where to put this information so I’m following your lead.

You can customize the look of your blog “home page” by changing the image in the header at the top of the page.   This is pretty easy to do with the following steps:

1. Log in or go to “Site Admin”
2. Click on “Design” on your dashboard
3. Click on “Custom Header Image” and you be able to browse your photos and pick one to upload
4. The next screen, which comes up automatically, lets you crop the photo to size it appropriately

A warning, some themes have the blog name and other information directly in the header so uploading a picture will take those off your blog unless you use other software to add the text to your picture.     In the custom header image screen, there is also a button to restore the default header so if you don’t like it, you can easily go back to where you were.

Classroom Blogs and Wikis

Please come on over to our Wiki to learn all about Classroom Blogs and Wikis.