social media
6 Reasons Blogrolls Are Dying
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 | social media | 14 Comments
I posted a message to TechRhet this weekend that I thought would yield a fast result. I needed to gather a list of comp/rhet blogs for a project, and I want to make sure I didn’t leave anyone out.
I asked readers to pass along links if they had a great blogroll or knew of some wonderful blogs I should include.
The response? One message. That’s it. One message that pointed to one blog.
So I began searching for the links on my own, visiting friend’s blogs and scooping up links as I went along. I quickly observed that blogrolls are a dying breed.
- Fewer people have blogrolls. There was a time when everyone listed every blogger possible in the sidebar. Not the case any more. More than 1/2 of the blogs I visited had no blogroll at all.
- Blogrolls tend to be an unordered list, which makes their usefulness questionable. Presented with a giant list of blogs, you have nothing to go by but the blog name or the writer’s name. Sorted into categories or with tags, the list would be easier for visitors to use. As they stand on most blogs, they seem to be a simple list of friends and colleagues in most cases.
- The blogrolls I did find were not well-maintained. The lists were littered with broken links, dead blogs (i.e., the link works but there hasn’t been a new post on the blog in months), and links to old blogs, with pointers to a new home.
- Gathering a blogroll (and checking its links) is a time-consuming project. There’s a reason these things aren’t maintained. The only way to make use the blog links all work properly is to sit and click on each and every one.
- Blogrolls are suffering because blogs have more competition these days. Many colleagues are foregoing blogs for shorter status updates. On more than one blog, I found a note that indicated the person was going to update via Facebook or Twitter instead of maintaining the blog.
- Follower and Friend lists are replacing blogrolls. When you click follow or okay a friend, you create a list of colleagues that is quite similar to a blogroll—and which is infinitely easier to maintain. They take care of themselves. You never have to chase down the URLs or check for deleted accounts.
Ultimately, I collected a list of nearly 70 blogs. Feel free to copy it for your own site or send links to anything I left out. I just won’t promise you that I’ll maintain it for the long term.
What Are Kidwatching, Microblogging, and Podcasts?
Thursday, August 19th, 2010 | Education, assessment, social media | No Comments
Soon NCTE will be launching an online site for members that will include many cool features, including an online glossary for English teachers.
My assignment this afternoon was to come up with 3 definitions to add to the collection as examples—and to make sure they were backed up in case they get accidentally erased. So here are my three rough drafts. What do you think? I’d love to hear suggestions to make them stronger!
Kidwatching Definition
Kidwatching, a term popularized by Yetta Goodman, is a way to record your students’ development by observing their behavior, strategies, and ways of making meaning. In the simplest explanation, kidwatching is exactly what it sounds like: watching kids—as they read, write, collaborate, and participate in your class—and taking notes on your observations of students’ effective use of skills, concepts, and strategies.
Observations alone can be useful; but what makes kidwatching a particular strong tool in the classroom is the step that teachers take to move beyond observations and note-taking to analysis and curriculum building based on on those observations and notes.
For more information, see O’Keefe, T. (1997). The Habit of Kidwatching. School Talk, 3(2). 4–5. [Available online at http://www.ncte.org/journals/st/issues/v3-2]
Microblogging Definition
Microblogging is an online publication method that allows writers to publish very short updates, typically in 140 characters or less. Tools used to post microblog updates include Twitter (the most popular tool), Jaiku, and Plurk. Status updates posted in Facebook can also be microblogs.
Microblog updates can touch many kinds of writing, from exposition to fiction and more. Twitter originally asked writers to post a response to the question “What are you doing?” The question has evolved to “What’s happening?” today. Microblog posts can include any of the following:
- a status update on where you are and what you’re doing
- comments and reviews on a book, movie, concert you’ve attended
- links to pictures with short comments on their significance
- pointers to websites, news articles, and other resources you’ve found valuable
- questions and calls for suggestions (as well as related answers)
- haiku (or Twaiku, as they are sometimes called) and other ultra-short poems
- one-sentence stories
As far as the content is concerned, anything goes. What primarily defines microblogging are the length and its publication in an online forum.
Some teachers use microblogging assignments as part of their class activities, to share quick updates on class business and as a writing activity. See Profhacker’s Framework for Teaching with Twitter for additional tips if you decide to try microblogging with students.
Podcast Definition
Podcasts are serial audio or video recordings, posted regularly online. Some people call video podcasts vlogcasts. You might think of a podcast as a kind of blog that posts recordings (rather than webpages) on a regular basis. Some call any audio or video recording a podcast, but in the strictest technical sense, the word refers to episodic publications.
To listen to a podcast, you can either play it directly (streaming) on your computer or download the file and listen to it later (on your computer or on an MP3 player or smartphone).
Podcasts can be used for any purpose a text might serve—they can tell fictional stories, share and comment on recent events, inform listeners about a topic, and persuade listeners to take an action or adopt a stance. As a result, podcasts are valuable tools for teaching students to use spoken language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
For more information on podcasts, see the ReadWriteThink strategy guide Teaching with Podcasts.
My Top 3 Tips for Teaching with Twitter
Sunday, July 18th, 2010 | classroom activity, community building, social media | No Comments
So you’re ready to dive in and try Twitter in the classroom. Let me share these tips that can make sure your classroom experience is a smooth and effective.
- Create separate logins. Audience and purpose shift from message to message. Set up different Twitter accounts to keep classroom updates separate from updates for family, friends, and others. There are tips to make managing multiple accounts easier. Encourage students to create a separate account for official class work as well. I actually post on four accounts:
- @newsfromtengrrl for college education in the news
- @tengrrl for personal updates to friends
- @hokiebunny for info related to my friends from Geekshed
- @BedfordBits for updates on Bedford/St. Martins blogs
- Use hashtags. Choose a specific and unique hashtag (# plus a keyword) to group updates from your different classes (e.g., #VTEngl10). See “How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags” for more suggestions. Lists can work too, but you have to set up a list. You can just search for hashtags.
- Use search creatively. Obviously you can search for those hashtags you’re using, but there are some more sophisticated search tools you can use to narrow down exactly what you’re looking for. Pair a search for your hashtag with filter:links to get just the Tweets that have URLS. That’s an easy way to find those links to an assignment students posted. The until: and since: operators can narrow down Tweets by date.
And one extra tip: you can always Make your own Twitter bird if you need to relieve some stress.
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by Lisa Yarost]
Classroom Activities Using Twitter
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 | classroom activity, lesson plan, social media | No Comments
Since Twitter is a communications tool, there are infinite ways to use the site in the English classroom.
These two excellent videos provide introductions to using Twitter with students that are polished enough to share at staff meetings and professional development sessions:
- The Twitter Experiment – UT Dallas is one of the first stories of a teacher using Twitter in the classroom to hit wide distribution . The YouTube video includes discussion and feedback from Dr. Monica Rankin and students in her history class. Rankin’s focus is on increasing discussion and class participation.
- Twitter in the Classroom? shares details on a partnership between University of Minnesota and Roosevelt High School to use Twitter to communicate and engage students.
In addition to giving students some basic tutorials and guides, it’s useful to go over the information from College Student’s Guide: Twitter 101. The page shares advice on how to make choices wisely so that students are taken seriously when they use Twitter as part of their classes.
For some more concrete classroom activities, look at Twitter Resources for the Classroom and Ten Ways to Use Twitter with Colleagues, both from Bedford Bits.
You’ll also find useful examples in these articles:
Piecing Together the Copyright Puzzle
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 | NCTE Inbox, classroom activity, composition, social media, visual rhetoric | No Comments
Figuring out copyright can be like piecing together a puzzle. You have a good idea how it’s supposed to work in the end, but all the little pieces can be confusing to piece together.
I’ve posted links to 15 sites on copyright and fair use that will help you move from scattered pieces to a full picture in this week’s NCTE Inbox Blog.
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo of copyright symbol by Horia Varlan]
What’s the Trick to Building Community in the Classroom?
Friday, June 4th, 2010 | classroom activity, community building, social media | No Comments
Online or off, getting students to talk to each other is a tricky task. I’ve had my happy share of classes where discussion took off, but I’ve also had my quota of classes where not even bribery with cookies and candy could get students chatting.
The FeverBee Primer About Successful Online Communities can help. While meant more for corporate and public community building, the lessons apply to the classroom just as well.
Lesson One: Establish a reason to connect
FeverBee Blogger Richard Millington explains that the key to a successful community is “connecting a group of people online and making them feel a part of something special.” Students aren’t going to launch into discussion just because we throw them together. We have to give them reasons to connect.
Themed classes (e.g., classes focused on a specific topic like “rhetoric of war” or “gender images”) can have a real advantage here. Students are already in the classroom because of their shared interest, so you’re one step closer to community.
In other classes, you have to work a little harder. Try tying current events on your campus or in the news to the pedagogical goals of the course to make connections and give students a reason to start talking.
For instance, almost everyone has an opinion on the Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux debate. Share the Fast Company article, “Analyzing Steve Jobs’ Language at D8: He’s a "People" Person!” to tie discussion of personal opinions to rhetorical analysis.
Lesson Two: Focus on group bonding
With so much we need to accomplish in the classroom, group bonding may seem off-task. Millington’s advice is important here:
The better you get to know and like your fellow members, and the more you care about their opinion of you, the more you participate and thus work towards a successful goal.
Give students time to bond and make connections. Even simple icebreakers can help students get to know each other and ultimately increase participation.
Lesson Three: Do things together
You have gathered your students and they have some common interests, but that still may not be enough to build a thriving community. Millington explains:
Bonding a community means doing things together. Like challenges for your community, milestones to reach or problems to overcome. It also means having a high level of interactions per member and ensuring members are happy to disclose their thoughts, feelings and other information.
Simply put, the class needs to do things together. You don’t have to layer on another set of tasks to make this happen. Look at what students are doing and try strategies like these:
- Recognize students with the most posts (just simply by the number).
- Identify students whose questions lead to the most follow-up discussion.
- Point out posts with great ideas that may have been overlooked.
- Mark group milestones (like reaching 1000 posts as a class).
As Millington mentions, community challenges can also be effective. As a simple challenge, you might ask students to reach a certain number of posts on a specific topic. If students work in small groups, challenge groups to have each member participate five times, for example.
Consider community participation projects as well. You might challenge students to post photos of language use from the local area (e.g., misspellings, grammar errors, ironic images). Start class collections of great resources, like links to websites that relate to the class focus. If your technology resources allow, you can even add some simple voting for the favorite photos or links.
Lesson Four: Encourage authentic discussion
To ensure things move in the right direction, do all you can to encourage authentic conversation. Allow students to discuss topics freely and without fear of criticism.
Free discussion doesn’t mean anything goes however. Millington suggests that
Allowing self-disclosure also means accepting negative comments. Not personal attacks, they’re nearly always worth removing (as our [sic] racist, bigoted and sexist remarks) . . . .. [Allow] heated debates and open disagreement to take place. It’s tough to let this happen, it feels like you should jump in and break it up. But don’t. Let people get their opinions out into the open.
Be sure the boundaries for safe and appropriate discussion are clear. Talk about the ad hominem fallacy, and explain how it applies to class discussion. Work together to create some class guidelines to help things run smoothly if you like.
Looking for more?
You’ll find some more suggestions in the FeverBee Primer. For some additional ways to highlight class members, check out 10 Excellent Rewards You Can Offer Members That Don’t Cost A Penny.
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