2007 October | miller's spin

Oct 25

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge - Task 2

Communication Tools, Blogs, Social Networking No Comments »

Welcome to Task 2.

In Phase one of the Technolog-e sessions, we looked at Educational uses of Blogs. Now, in these five short tasks (should take no more than 15 minutes each), we’ll be exploring some of the techniques you can use to embed blogging into your work, engage your colleagues and your students.

Looking back at Task 1

In task 1 (getting started), you set up your first blog and wrote your first post. What a great achievement!

Here are some of your new blogs;

Well done… that’s a great start.

In some of these blogs, I can see real potential to engage and connect not only with your colleagues, but students, industry and community.

Task 2 - Spend some time on your About Me/ Profile page

The About Page of your blog is a VERY important part of your blog. It gives you a chance to connect with your readers on a more personal level. Here’s mine.

This page gets checked out to see who you are before they decide whether they want to read your blog or how much they are likely to engage with you. Rework it regularly. I have run some audits on my blog and this page does get as many visits as the front page.

Your task is to develop your About/Profile page, and here are some tips on how to get your readers interested;

Talk about yourself before your role - examples: Sue Waters | Michelle Martin | Kate Quinn

Try to avoid acronym’s and ‘techie’ words and phrases - like “new and emerging technologies”, “personalised learning environments” and “pedagogy”, unless you are writing to explain what they are

Include your picture or a personal image, include some personal things that allow people to see what they have in common with you

List any other online spaces that you have that your readers might like (e.g. myspace, lastfm, twitter, wiki’s, del.icio.us, etc)

Spell out subscription options - RSS… so readers can be notified when you post something new (need some help?)

Provide a way for your readers to contact you. Some free blogs have Contact Forms as part of the deal, check your blog settings and options.

* Remember not to put too much personal information here, it’s open web. Check our Team security & privacy page from our session with Sue Shelly.

Share This

Oct 17

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge - Task 1

Communication Tools, Blogs, Social Networking 10 Comments »

Embedding Blogging into your Educational Spaces

In Phase one of the Technolog-e sessions, we looked at Educational uses of Blogs.

As part of this challenge, we will explore some of the techniques you can use to embed blogging into your work, whether that’s engaging colleagues, student, family or all of them (you get out of this as much as you put in) in the one space.

Your Challenge

It’s time to strengthen our network, collaborate more with our team, and email less.

So let’s start with our own Blog Challenge.

Note: One task a day (even a quick one) might be a bit much to ask of you, but you have some paid time for your role once a week. So I am asking you to take 10 - 15 mins to complete one task per week for five weeks.

To learn about the power of blogs, we need to start using them. There’s not much point me listing the blog challenges on our team wiki, so I’ll do it through my blog….

Task 1 - Write A Post

If you haven’t already

Set up a blog with Blogger and Edublogs .
Watch this video on how to set up an edublogs blog.
Your blog title and URL address is important, it sticks, consider carefully.
Choose a design/ template/ style - don’t spend too much time on this yet, it’s a later task.
Get started by writing your first post. Watch this video on how to write posts for Edublog blogs. This could be a welcome, an introduction to you and why you have a blog, it could invite other to comment on your first post.

For some tips withnumber 5, read Sue’s tips.

Blogging

* image from here

Some useful Blog Challenge resources

Sue Waters - 5 Blog Tasks (one per day) to get you up and communicating
31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge - some great techniques (some of which are not relevant) to implement in your own blogging
Alex’s journey on the 31 Day Challenge

Share This

Oct 15

Blog Themes… can you claim one?

Blogs 15 Comments »

Creating and maintaining an online identity.

Blog themes are usually free and as such we can’t possibly expect others not to use the same ones. You have to pay for that!

Blog themes

But what if that person is someone you know? What if someone who has a fairly strong virtual identity and is in the same professional field, and is someone who visits your blog?

What if someone that you knew changed their blog theme to something almost identical to yours?

Would you be surprised when you visited their space? Would you be annoyed or flattered?

What if you had carried that theme through to other spaces?

Would you change your theme?

What do you think?

How do you feel about your online identity?

Share This

Oct 14

Part 2: Joining a Social Network

Communication Tools, Blogs, Social Networking 10 Comments »

Which Social Network should I join?

So, now you know what Social Networking is, and you want to get in on the action, but there are so many Social Networking sites and so many ways to network with people online, so which do I think are the best, or most appropriate?

Let’s start by looking at questions below.

How should I network?
Why am I joining this network? Is it to collaborate with colleagues or students?
What are my students using and why?
What do I have to contribute, can I add value to this network?
Do I have time to contribute?
Am I ready to have a go at this?

Here are some of my thoughts;

I want to connect with students in their space - myspace
I want to connect with students and colleagues in a structured manner - facebook
I am time poor but want to connect with people via image sharing - flickr
I am time poor but want to connect with people visually by videos - YouTube
I am time poor but want to share presentations - slideshare
I am time poor and want to keep in touch, in the loop and determine my own involvement - Twitter
I want to collaborate and contribute to my community - Ning, edubloggers

If you are thinking about joining a Social Network to collaborate with colleagues, then perhaps an edu specific space like EduBloggerWorld could be appropriate. If you are in DET, you might already use Edna. Many educators in my Social Networks have a presence in at least one and usually up to six or seven networks.

If it’s students you want to engage and connect with, then I think it’s a good idea to use one of the spaces they are already in, like myspace or Facebook. The Del.icio.us online bookmarking is a good tool for sharing links and you can join networks or groups already in these spaces.

Facebook is could be good for both because you can specify what some readers/ friends you add see, you can allow students to see your ‘limited profile’ for example. Facebook was created for college students. There are also lots of educational groups in Facebook. Here are some of the groups I’m in;

As at today, there are 409 ‘categorised’ educational applications to use on your Facebook profile.

If you just want to network by sharing something of yours or favourite things, things you are interested in, like photo’s or video’s, then consider YouTube or Flickr.
Word of warning; these networks can demand quite a bit of your time, so before you commit to one, consider if you have time to check in once or twice a week to read and contribute.

Educational Social Networks

There are a number of social networks that have been created specifically for educators.

Ning based communities

Readers, please comment…

This is a call to all educational readers of this blog and in my networks to post a comment and share what you think, where you network, or suggest a good space you have found that has been beneficial. What have been the advantages of becoming a member of an educational network? What have been some of the challenges?