Chapter 3, Weblogs: Get Started!

I like the suggestion to "start small." I'm developing sympathy for students who struggle to juggle all the work they have to do, and to produce quality work. I feel like I don't have very much that's interesting to say. I like the idea of starting with "posting homework and relevant class links" but I wonder how that would work with TeacherWeb, and if a Wiki page would be better.

Blog safety: Students don't use their real names...No problem. They'll be blogging in Spanish, so they can use their Spanish names.

There's a lot of technical info in this chapter. I'll have to come back to it as needed. I think I'll want to control students' posts before publication, so I should have them save their posts as a "draft" and then I can hit "publish" for them. How will that work with 80+ sixth graders to keep track of?

I checked out the Edublogs Awards site recommended on p.44. Found a blog...I think it's done by an ESL teacher, with reflections and links to videos he used with his classes. I'm not sure how to make URLs linkable (?) but I'll try:   http://allatc.wordpress.com/    Pretty complex use of a blog. I can see it will take time for me to get more adept at this.

Chapter 3 (False start)

Just testing out the language feature on Blogger. I changed the language to Hebrew, so all the commands, menus, etc. are in Hebrew. This post is coming out in English, but it's being printe from right to left! OK. Not too useful. I'll try switching to Spanish another time. Might be useful for my purposes right now as a Spanish teacher. Now I have to figure out which button is "publish" and how to switch back to English

Chapter 2 Weblogs-Pedagogy and Practice

Questions I had as I read this: Are Class portal, blackboard, wiki all the same/similar thing? University of New Hampshire has a blackboard which includes a Parent Portal. It's just clicking on different topics to get answers, but I don't think there's a way to post things, so it's not really interactive. I guess I'll figure out what these things are as I move along with the readings and the classes.

I think it would be great to have a Weblog for the Foxborough World language teachers to share ideas and ask/answer questions. Before I knew about blogs, I was thinking about the online bulletin board concept. I wonder if that bulletin board idea is the same as a blog. Anyway, I'm wondering if this World Languages blog idea could work as a group goal for the new Foxboro evaluation program. But I'm a little overwhelmed by all I have to do, and also it gets complicated trying to connect with the staff. Also, they may already have decided on their goals. Well, perhaps for next year, with more time to plan.

Chapter 1 The Read/Write Web

I actually was pretty interested in a lot of the information in this chapter, especially the history of the WWW, Mosaic Web Browser, etc. It's amazing to me how fast the technology has developed. I remember using "Ask Jeeves" to search for information. Seems like ages ago. I imagined thousands/millions of people sitting at computers, searching for information to answer every individual question!

Some concerns/questions that came up as I read this chapter:

• What is RSS (answered later--now I know)
• I was interested that Microsoft and IBM are actually responding to users' comments in order to improve products. I wonder if they'll figure out a way to add an "end" or " Shut down" button next to the "start" button, to be more clear about how to shut down.
• I'm concerned about people's work spreading around the Internet without attribution. I have often been sent by email an entertaining piece about the the Rosh HaShanah tradition of throwing bread crumbs into a body of water to discard sins. There has never been an attribution. I know the author, and feel that his name should always accompany that piece.
• Concerned about balancing the safety of children with benefits of publishing work. Need to learn more about this.