Welcome, Course Developing Bloggers!
July 29th, 2011What are we doing? Why are we here?
Learning objectives for blog assignments in our workshop:
- To use social media to reflect on learning and to connect with a real audience
- Posting your blog entries is one part of what you’ll do here, but commenting on others’ posts is just as important. Who knows? You may also see comments from visiting readers, such as colleagues here at OSU, colleagues from other campuses, authors we’re discussing, or tween pop star Justin Bieber. (Well, it could happen … this is a public blog!)
- To share artifacts created for your courses
- Collaboration = Inspiration!
- To learn from each other’s reflections and creations
- Two heads are better than one!
- To bridge the gap from this training to your classroom
- Blogging begins during our professional development workshop and continues through your first term teaching the course. Hopefully this will help you apply the concepts we study together for the benefit of your students.
How often do you need to blog?
- Participants will need to post three original blog entries during this six-week professional development, during weeks 1, 3, and 5. Be sure to comment on at least two of your colleagues’ posts, as well. However, you are welcome and encouraged to post and comment more often.
- In addition, participants are asked to post at least two more times during the term they first teach the course.
What are these categories and tags all about?
- Categories have been created for you and are based on the learning outcomes for our training. Each post you write should relate to at least one of our class categories. Placing posts within categories is an organizational strategy, but it’s also a form of metacognitive reflection.
- Tags are up to you. Try to come up with at least three tags for each post.
How long do blog posts need to be?
- Use as many words as you need to get your idea across. Keep in mind that blogs are not dissertations. Most blog posts are between 100 and 500 words. This one is just over 300, which makes this a good place to stop!
Tags: blogging tips, collaboration, getting started, objectives, welcome
Please provide the specific dates for Week 1, 3 and 5 postings on the blog.
Comment by Sue Helback - September 29th, 2011 @ 1:47 pmHi Sue — thanks for jumping in with a comment! We have a complete course schedule in our Blackboard site. We’ll officially begin on Monday, Oct. 3, but the site will be available for your to preview this weekend.
Blog due dates are …
Monday, Oct. 10
Monday, Oct. 24
Monday, Nov. 7
Of course, everyone is welcome to post more often than this.
Comment by Shannon Riggs - September 29th, 2011 @ 3:35 pmTwo questions – How to post (I couldn’t get that video on how to post to work) – and will the “how to post” video show us how to use the formatting and images you used above? That would be great.
Comment by Sara Jameson - October 1st, 2011 @ 9:00 pmSara, hopefully this will help:
Here are two alternate ways to access the video:
http://videos.osuecampus.com/index.php?video=shannon/Blog_Posts.mp4
http://screencast.com/t/OafjxChy
Also, just so you have the steps to follow, here they are:
1. Log in to the blog site with your ONID credentials
2. Click Site Admin
3. In the Dashboard area in the upper left portion of the screen, click My Sites
Look for Online Course Development (our class blog)
4. If you click Visit, it takes you to the blog’s home page. To post, click Dashboard.
5. Under Posts in the left-hand menu, click Add New.
6. Here, you’ll see a text box with all sorts of formatting buttons, very similar to discussion forum posting here in Blackboard. Post your blog entry!
7. Click Publish to release your blog to the world!
Comment by Shannon Riggs - October 3rd, 2011 @ 9:02 amHi, and thanks for the information. I was able to view the instructional video on how to post. One of the things mentioned was that this blog is open to the public. If I want to integrate a blog into a course I’m designing, can I restrict its access to just those students taking my course? The idea of it being open & available to others sends up a warning flag of sorts. Maybe you can clarify that for me. Thanks, and I’ve enjoyed this exercise.
Dave Stemper
Comment by stemperd - October 5th, 2011 @ 4:27 pmDave, yes — blog access can be restricted. One of the reasons I decided not to restrict access on this blog was a story I heard at an elearning conference recently. Blogs were being used in a faculty training like this one, and participants were discussing an article they’d read in their posts. Well, the author of the article popped in to comment. That’s the kind of thing that just doesn’t happen on campus!
There are pros and cons of public and private settings. If you do choose to go public, it’s good practice to make sure students understand that they’re on the wide open web.
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