@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-26

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-25

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-24

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-23

Monday, August 23rd, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-22

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

6 Reasons Blogrolls Are Dying

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 | social media | 14 Comments

Cinnamon Roll by stevendepoloI 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.

  1. 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.
     
  2. 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.
     
  3. 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.
     
  4. 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.
     
  5. 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.
     
  6. 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.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by stevendepolo]

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-21

Saturday, August 21st, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-20

Friday, August 20th, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

@newsfromtengrrl for 2010-08-19

Thursday, August 19th, 2010 | news | No Comments

Powered by Twitter Tools

What Are Kidwatching, Microblogging, and Podcasts?

Thursday, August 19th, 2010 | Education, assessment, social media | No Comments

Writing a Podcast by Irish TypepadSoon 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.

 

[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by Irish Typepad]

Tags: , , ,

Search

RSSLiteracy and Education in the News

Entries by Date

September 2010
M T W T F S S
« Aug «-»  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  

Archives

  • 2010 (231)
  • 2009 (114)
  • 2008 (4)
  • 2007 (33)
  • 2006 (283)
  • 2005 (313)
  • 2004 (34)
  • 2003 (27)

Recommended Books