I’m giving a presentation/workshop to a great group of teacher consultants of the CSUWP on Saturday. The focus/topic is "Blogging &/or Podcasting 102." Do you think they’d like to leave with their own blog, or should we work towards an online community ala Elgg? I originally had intended to go the blog route, as I’ve done with that group in the past, but a conversation with a colleague this week has me thinking that perhaps a supportive online community gathering place might be a better way to go.
What do you think?
Presentation Question
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Get a blog and a supportive online community in two steps. Set them up with blogs and then with Bloglines accounts, making them subscribe to each other’s blogs. As well, choose a few edubloggers that you think they would benefit from and have them join an already existing community. This is basically what I have had my grade 7 / 8 students do. We created blogs, they are slowly building up what we are calling a PLN (Personal Learning Newtwork) as they are finding other blogs whose voices are valuable for them and I have given them several blogs as “required reading” that they need to subscribe to.
Hi Bud,
I’m just thinking about what might be more meaningful to this group of educators. If this is a one off presentation where you are simply demoing something go with blogs – and see if you can light a few more blog fires?
If you intend on building a more collaborative ongoing relationship with this community, I would go with ELGG because of the richness of the type of community that you can create, which also includes blogging as well.
Also, although I see your focus is on Blogging and Podcasting, I would love to see what this group could create using a WIKI and internet access in 30 minutes. This might offer the type of immediate collaboration to solve particular issues that as a group, they are working through. Maybe start with a question – what are the steps to effective professional development around integrating technology in the writing classroom? Let them brainstorm individually in a part of the wiki. Then let them compile their ideas as a group in another part of the wiki. And finally give them the opportunity to reflect on the ideas that were aggragated to see if they might have a new breaktrhrough. 🙂 okay – I’m rambling.