I love it when you have a vision in your mind about how you want something to work and it actually works!! I had that experience this week, almost perfectly (like 95% perfect!).
I went through the list of the top 20 online tools that was on our course page here and found many more tools that look great to try. I decided to take a stab at "wallwisher" I'm still having a little trouble with embedding it, but could see using this in my class. I am trying to embed it into the main page on my class website but am having trouble because it is a googlesite. I would like to use wallwisher as a weekly announcement or quick question board. For example - I could post reminders about when a test is or when a project is due and students could post questions about where to find certain information, how to use a tool, a question that they need to ask the next day, etc. This would save the class blog for discussion related questions. Which leads me to my amazingness of the week!...ok not MY amazingness, the web's amazingness...
Our school district has some really great google apps that we have access to and blogger is associated with google, so I had this wonderfully tentative vision in my head of being able to embed my class blog into my website and my students being able to read the blog and comment all in one place and...drumroll please...it actually worked!!! I made a new webpage for my Physics 1 class for this year as well as a class blog and was able to embed my blog right on into the webpage! It's fantastic!! The students can even comment right on the page without having to link to the webpage and open a new tab or window! I'm so excited!! (as if you couldn't tell...) The main reason behind my excitement is that I find the more pages you expect students to go to, the less likely they are to actually use them, now having everything in one place removes excuses from my students' mouths but even better makes communication as a class so much easier. I am still trying to decide exactly how to format the blog and website. I have 3 classes of Physics 1 and here are some options that I am exploring
1. Use just one class blog and tag the blogs that students should respond to with their class period. If I set this up with students right away I don't think it should be too bad.
2. Set up 3 class blogs (one for each class) downside with this is that I have to maintain 3 blogs which could be tricky
3. Just use one blog and let all students from all classes comment on the same posts. This could be an interesting crossover and learning experience but it could also get out of control...that's between 75 and 90 students commenting!
What do you think? Other suggestions are certainly welcome. Also, if anyone is familiar with googlesites and knows how to embed advice would be appreciated. Last question...for now at least - does anyone know if there is a way to alter which blog post is displayed first other than just displaying by date?
Here is a link to my class website if you want to take a peek. It is not nearly finished but at least it's a start! Please let me know if it doesn't work...I made it public, but have had problems with sharing in the past.
Thank you in advance for any feedback you have!
That's really exciting that you can embed your blog into a Google website. I just set up a Google website today, so that is perfect. Thanks for sharing this! I, too, find that there is a law of diminishing returns with how many sites you give to kids. Class site looks good!
ReplyDeleteI love that you have the voice over on the blog-what did you use to do that? I'm not sure I can give you any advice on grouping, but it is really something big to consider. I have one BB shell for two sections which is about 50 students. I sometimes separate them in groups because they may not be exactly on the same schedule, different questions come up, and it's so hard to keep track. For some things it is better/easier for them to be one big group. I'm planning on adding a blog but will use it a little differently, if I were to do what you are thinking I'm not sure what I would do, but choice one seems the most reasonable to handle. Since I am thinking about using blogs as portfolios, students would have their own blogs and I will only have one.
ReplyDeleteKelly, the voice over is actually from the glogster I made (it works well that it does work with the blog too! :-)) I set up the glog to start when it is opened so as soon as you go to the blog page (since the glog is embedded) it starts talking. Thanks for the feedback on grouping...choice 1 does seem the easiest...at least for me...I don't think it should be too back for students.
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