All posts by John

I am a teacher, currently working in Banton Primary for North Lanarkshire Council. I also act as Product Owner/provide support for Glow Blogs. I like Blogs.
emails

Welcome e-mail one

email_infoWhat is this all about? See the first post to find out about the Bootcamp and to sign up.

This message will be mailed out to all participants:

Hi Folks,
Thanks for signing up for the blogging bootcamp. (if you have received this mail in error please let me know and I’ll take you off the list.)

It is a while before we start but I wanted try and make sure everything works as well as possible for participants when we start.

The hardware needed for the project is minimal. You could do the whole thing with one computer connected to the internet. It will of course help if working with a class to have a projector. I don’t imagine that you would ever need to have a lot of computers/devices to take part.
You will need a way of capturing digital images for some of the activities. An old camera, phone, iPad or table with a camera should work fine.

I imagine that to begin with the activities will be whole class ones, discussion followed by posting to the blog. As you get used to blogging you might like to conduct the whole class discussion and then had over the writing and posting to pairs of children. One of the idea of the bootcamp is to enable a class blog to be maintained with minimum effort on the teacher’s part. Giving children increasing responsibility. You will hopefully find out how to make this work for your class yourself over the week. You will of course be in a much better position to figure out the best way to organize your class than anyone else.

There will be the opportunity to do some digital audio and video near the end of the course. so software to edit this might help (Audacity for PC or Mac, GarageBand for Mac, Movie Maker or iMovie would all be fine). Don’t worry if you have never played with audio & video before, we will help and nothing is mandatory. It should be easy to do as much or as little of the bootcamp as you want.

The majority of participants signed up so far are in Scotland and are using Glow. Make sure that your login and logins of pupils work. If you are going to use another blogging system make sure everybody who needs to can access the system.

You do not need to have a blog created. You can do this in the first week. If you have a blog that is fine too.

The camp will follow a pattern each week.
On Monday afternoon (unless we get a majority that prefer a different day) there will be a glow meet video conference for those that can access glow. (Possibly a simultaneous google hangout for the non glow folk). This will lay out the weeks activities. The conference will be followed by the same material published as a video and as text. There is no requirement to be in the conference but hopefully it will be useful and fun.
There will usually be 3 activities that can be carried out each week. Each will include a opportunity to post to your blog.

The technical guidance will be aimed at Glow blogs but I’ll endeavor to help users of other systems if needed and if I can.

The Blogging Bootcamp site will give you a view of all of the other participants activity. We hope that you will make the project a success by visiting and commenting on other blogs.

A rough outline of the weeks will be posted onto the Bootcamp blog soon and I’ll let you know via email when that is up. I am always happy to discuss ‘this sort of stuff’ so don’t hesitate to send me a mail if you need any help.
cheers

John

email icon from 177icons.com/hand-drawn-web-icon-set (the url no longer works but icon distributed for feee use)

Announcements

Welcome to Blogging Bootcamp

1 Comment

Get started with a class blog or boost an existing one. Join in online from the 16th February, 10 weeks, or so of blogging fun and learning.

Sign up:
You can sign up in several ways, choose what is easiest for you, it doesn’t matter how you sign up.  Since the Bootcamp is now underway please email if you would like to join in.

Late to the party you can still join in

We need the following information:

  • Name of Teacher Involved
  • Contact E-mail address
    Your School and Where it is:
  • Your Class Age and Stage of the class that will take part. The bootcamp is aimed at class blogs, but open to others, let us know what kind of edu blog you have it is not a class blog.
  • Do you have an existing blog? We will give instructions and help about creating a blog in Week 1 of the bootcamp. NB this will be aimed at Glow users, but you are welcome to join in using another blogging service.
  • URL of existing Blog

The bootcamp will take you through creating a blog, adding features and a range of blogging activities. Classes will have the opportunity to link up with other glow blogs and the world wide blogging community.

Each week there will be ‘technical’ tips, blogging challenges and discussion points that can be carried out in your classroom and on your blog.

What you need: A Class, somewhere to blog (glow for example). No technical knowledge needed.

While most of the technical support will be aimed at glow users the bootcamp is open to any classroom.