Getting Started with Blogging

As the usefulness of blogging becomes more apparent, it is necessary to support people develop their own blogs. There are many blog providers. I will walk through the steps using the google sites.

First we will setup an gmail account if you don't all ready have one.

With your browser go to Google.com.

Click on Gmail.

Click on Create an Account, and follow the prompts. Remember your gmail email address and your password. Write it on a sheet of paper and store it in your sock drawer. Some suggest in your mother's undie drawer because no one goes there.

Secondly we'll setup the blog.

Go to blogger.com

If you need to, sign in with your gmail account information.

Follow the prompts. About names: the first one requested is a general name that the public will see. Another is the title of your blog, always on the top of your blog page (think carefully about this one; it's like your brand, your sales pitch). Lastly you will enter a name for the URL address of your blogspot (simple is good).

You're ready to blog or post an entry. Do it.

Thirdly, find blogs that you would like to read on a regular basis, like that of your professor. Try "readmoreyal.blogspot.com". Click on "Follow" in the right column and follow the prompts.

Blogging is all about getting readers and interconnecting so follow blogs that interest you and follow blogs that are followed by those you follow.

Have fun but beware that blogging can be addictive. Questions: email me at saxowsky@gmail.com.

Blogging Ideas and Standards

In conjunction with a session on how to use blogs in education, both technically and pedagogically, I adding several links that Will Richardson includes in his book "Blogs, wikis, podcasting..."

The first is a site where you can share the different uses for blogs in education.

http://anne.teachesme.com/2004/10/05

There are probably many more since 2004.

The second is site listing the Standards for the English Language Arts by NCTE and IRA.

Since the one is Richardson's book is outdated, I recommend that a search in ncte.org would help with the standards for language arts. Not being an language arts scholar I will not attempt to advise anyone on this topic.

Should there be standards for blogging in education?

Driving in China

They say that driving is China is crazy. I believe it. I've seen it. But why? Here's one of my theories.

Throughout the past century as Americans drove cars, Chinese walked and drove bikes. When we walk, or bike, we naturally avoid collisions by adjusting our pace or stepping aside. Seldom if ever do we stop at the edge of an empty sidewalk and wait for a potential walker to pass before us. So it is in China, and many other developing countries, and when the car came into the picture, the same rules applied. Basically don't collide. Don't stop, just merge into traffic. They don't want to hit you any more than you want to be hit.

Is that where we are with the Internet? We chat as we would on a street corner. We interrelate as if we're in the privacy of our homes. Because we often are. And like the Chinese we don't want that to change.

We've just plodded through a course, a research project it you will, on gathering, organizing and managing information from the Internet. Now we are more "up to our necks" than before, but we do know there are tools for this job, in fact there are too many such tools. So we walk randomly sidestepping and slowing down and then surging forward. There are even some backtracking going on. Oh, where is clarity and modeling?

Staying the Journey

Certainly the theme education encompasses my life. PBS was just talking about teachers and education, and I realized that what intrigues me now as much as anything, is the changes that are occurring. The drivers in this change seem to be either politics such as NCLB, our status among other nations and technology.

During the past several weeks with my new focus on Professional Learning Environment (PLE) or Personal Learning Network (PLN), I have been pushed and shoved is so many directions, I'm too dizzy to stay up straight. But I've learned to take small steps, start simple, progress slowly and keep going. When the information becomes more than I'm ready for, pick only the most important information and gradually add from the peripheral. Don't expect to understand everything. Just because something is new doesn't mean that's what I need to do. Just because something is traditional and well-used doesn't mean that I can't change.

Frustration can come at many levels whether it's a president without a health care bill or a baby who can't verbalize hunger. Frustration can be managed particularly when looking beyond the immediate surroundings. The big picture in lifelong learning is finding and utilizing the tools that benefit that process. Frustration will come while searching for those tools but small deliberate steps will get you there.

Outdated before we used it

Check this out.

Is Blogging a Slog? Some Young People Think So!

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/technology/story/1461110.html

There goes a wasted term! Haha

If we don't get briefed on the iPad pretty soon, we're be behind again. Drat!

Fields of Green

As I crested the final small hill approaching Monmouth, with the cloud defused sunrise in front of me, I saw a large expansive field of green, fresh from the night's rain. Something in me moved. It was beautiful. The feeling is one that each of us has from time to time in different settings for different reasons.

If I have a fear about computers, it's losing that feeling. For me it's a matter of experiencing less often in lieu of a computer screen. For another generation, I fear it may be never experiencing it at all. One evening PBS ran a feature on the national parks of America, calling it America's best idea, and one day earlier they ran the Digital Nation feature about how America and its society is changing through computers. What a dichotomy!

What do I fear about computers? I fear losing the special inspiration and rejuvenation that comes from appreciating nature and its beauty. I fear ever experiencing a hug from the friend behind the computer screen. I have a plan to reclaim my time with nature and beauty, and gather hugs. Do you?

This is not my picture but you get the idea.

Digital Nation

Last evening, on our television, PBS played the video called Digital Nation.  It traveled through a multitude of ways that computers and other electronic devices affect the lives of people around the world.  Many of the themes were not new: children think, and therefore learn, differently than their parents, and education needs to adjust, perhaps in a major way, as to how teaching and learning are approached.

The section about South Korea, one of the more "wired" nations in the world, and how they first teach children respect for computers and the Internet.  "Computers are helpful, we must respect them and other users," is a paraphrase of the ditty they sang.  The song ended with "netiquette, netiquette!."  And a commentator said that it's too late to do this in America.

The surprises came to me outside the education sphere and particularly in the world of the military and recruiting.  I'm still digesting the video games and the mindset for these activities.  It wasn't far from Second Life and its use in business as well as the interactive gaming activities.  

All of this encompasses education, how education is affected by these activities and attitudes and how education can affect positive effective learning in the future.  What a full plate!  Again I'm overwhelmed.  Are you ready for this?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/