So we’ve decided the best way to pull together a comprehensive resource is to survey educators. We’re looking for replies no matter what blogging platform you may be using.

And here’s how you can help:

1. Can you complete our survey?
2. Can you share a link to our survey with your network?  The more responses we receive, the better the data we can deliver!
3. Share links to any recent articles you’ve written on this topic by leaving a comment so we can include when we present the survey results.

Thanks for helping out and we’ll be sharing the data we collect in a follow up post.

Recently, we were talking about best practices of professional development and writing support documents. We then moved on to a related discussion on best instructional strategies in the classroom when working with students.

One of us believes (and much research will show), that students will remember more and understand better when they struggle with concepts and new ideas. Learning experiences that provide students an opportunity to play with concepts and figure out on their own are best.

The other (with good reasoning and research to back it up too), believes that students that struggle will shut down. A better approach is to provide as much scaffolding as possible – activities that walk through information in a step-by-step manner.

No doubt that to some extent this will depend on the learner, content, environment, and more. But there is a general philosophy at play.

What Say You?

We think many of our readers will have great insight into helping us continue this debate.

Let’s turn this into a blogging discussion!

Here’s what we’d like to try and do:

1. Write a post on your own blog about this topic. Share your thoughts, examples, research – or whatever you’d like
2. Leave a comment below with a link to your post
3. We’ll compile a list of all submissions at the end of the week on a post here on The Edublogger

She has asked some great questions that we know others would like answered as well.

So we’ve decided:

1. We would love to hear YOUR answers to some of her questions
2. We will write a follow up post that pulls together all your responses with the more specific questions we will need to answer

Can you help us?

Please share your thoughts on any or all of the following questions:  

1. How long have you been blogging with your students?
2. How has the educational experience for your students been transformed since you’ve been blogging with them?
3. Do you believe that blogs have benefited the education system?
4. Do you believe that blogs will become a common way of educating people in the future?
5. Why has the way of teaching through technology grown dramatically?

Just leave a comment below with your thoughts or anything else you would like to say about blogging with your students!

Feel free to also answer with a blog post of your own (just leave a link in the comments) or send a tweet to @edublogs.

Thanks!

Image: I’m BLOGGING this! by salendron.

We agree that volunteers in schools deserve all the recognition they can get and truly appreciate all they do.

Schools and classrooms rely on volunteers for countless activities, including field trips, school events, working with students, and much more.

But, as we’ve all probably experienced, recruiting and managing volunteers is not always an easy task. That’s why we like VolunteerSpot.com and wanted share.

VolunteerSpot makes it easy to organize teachers, parents and volunteers with free online signup sheets and volunteer scheduling.

Using a simple planning wizard, any teacher, room mom, or volunteer leader can create an online signup sheet or signup calendar listing jobs, shifts and things to bring.  Volunteers and parents are invited to the activity with an email message (or a link in a blog or on Facebook) and can quickly choose their spots with just a few clicks – and they never need to register an account.

Volunteers are then sent automated confirmation and reminder messages to help everyone keep their commitments.

Simply organize:

• Special events like field day, carnivals, and graduation
• Exam proctors
• Parent-teacher conferences
• Classroom readers and end-of-school parties
• Field trip chaperones and supplies
• Service projects (track volunteer hours)
• Club tournaments, concessions and swim meets
• Library, recess, garden and cafeteria volunteers

Special Upgrade Offer

VolunteerSpot’s free service meets the needs of most groups, but there is also an upgraded version that includes hours tracking, extra registration fields, and assistant organizers.

Readers here can get a free 3 month premium upgrade simply by using promo code EdublogsDoGood when signing up. This code is good through June 30, 2012.

VolunteerSpot and Your Blog

We’ve seen a good number of Edublogs users with links like this to VolunteerSpot activities and events right on their blog.

To add a sign up button to a page or post on your blog, first create your account and set up an activity at VolunteerSpot.com.

Then look for “Create a Link” on the left of your dashboard.

Copy the code this process creates for you and make sure you paste it into the “HTML” tab of your editor in your blog’s dashboard.

More on embedding code can be found here.

Happy Planning and Happy Volunteer Appreciation Week!

As an Algebra teacher – this question came up every year in my classroom.

And every year, my off-the-cuff answer would change.

1st Year Teacher (ambitious and full of ideas): In such cool applications as Physics and object trajectories (like shooting out of a cannon!), economics and optimization, area problems and fence building, and so much more!

3rd Year Teaching (beginning to build my teaching rhythm): You’ll really need to understand them when you get to Algebra II and beyond. I mean – it is the foundation for all polynomial studies! Just trust me. You need to learn them.

6th Year Teaching (maybe a bit of cynicism setting in): Let’s be honest – you probably won’t. But that isn’t the point. Learning quadratics is a fantastic mental exercise and builds critical thinking skills. The mathematician in me believes they are beautiful. 

This progression of answers may seem backwards to you and my last answer wasn’t all that popular with many students (and maybe a few parents too). It goes against the idea that everything we learn in school should be for a specific purpose.

Whose Purpose?

How we answer questions like these depends on what we view as being most important in the purpose of schools as a whole.

For many, the logic is that younger grades prepare you for older grades, older grades prepare you for the university level, and higher ed prepares you for a job.

This seems reasonable.

Others might argue that in today’s environment of accountability, the reality is that what you learn today prepares you for the tests you will take at the end of the year. The tests will make sure that you are ready for next year. Next year, you get prepared for another set of tests!

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

My Purpose

What if the real purpose of school wasn’t about preparing for jobs or creating an informed electorate?

What if was simply about learning fun stuff, absorbing as many ideas as possible, and seeking answers to challenging questions?

Instead of concentrating on the visions of business leaders or politically motivated legislation, we need to continuously evaluate what students need and deserve out of their school careers.

My ideal purpose of schools and formal education is to expose students to as many ideas, topics, and challenges as possible. The end results (achievement tests) and the specific curriculum covered isn’t nearly as important as the learning experiences along the way.

The rest will then fall in to place.

What I am saying, especially to all of my friends and former colleagues in the midst of another stressful round of heavy state testing – do not forget that all of those great lessons, activities, and projects you did with your students this school year are way more important than any test results or grades.

Yes, really.

WHAT’S YOURS?

Leave a comment below with your ideal purpose, or any relevant thoughts you might have!

Image: Quadratic Equations from Bigstock

So when I heard about Smithsonian’s EdLab I contacted Jeff Meade, their Mobile Learning Program Lead, and asked him to tell us how they are helping educators.

Check out what he has to say:

Can you tell us what is EdLab?

The EdLab is a place for educators to explore and establish new media practices for their classrooms. We provide workshops that put teacher in the creative role, solving missions, working in teams, and exploring digital and analog (non-digital) tools. We emphasize learning from failure, using the right tool for the job, building 21st century skills, and empowering teachers and students to make a difference in the world.

EdLab hosts weekend workshops during the school year and week-long workshops during the summer. Workshops leverage digital media to increase connections between Smithsonian museums, collections and experts to focus on authentic learning.

Signing up is easy- you can join us for free on the Postal Museum’s website.

What about educators who can’t attend your EdLab Workshops? How can they get involved?

We’ve started a new Living Archive of resources and teacher-inspired connections. Connections are mission-based learning plans embracing authentic learning experiences, peer feedback, product creation and sharing opportunities.

Teachers can check out ideas for activities they can do with their students or get in and share their ideas with us. A good way to get started is on the EdLab facebook page where we discuss current education issues and share what educators are doing in the classroom. We also showcase work being done by teachers on our blog.

Why was EdLab program started?

The why behind EdLab is the fun part.

Teachers are looking for new ways to connect with their students. EdLab enables us to help educators achieve their goals while helping them make sense of how museum resources can be used with students.

EdLab’s emphasis on digital media skills is not the only reason teachers come- teachers say they’re fed up with with students being disengaged from curriculum content and, well, the kids are bored. Bored students do not make teaching any fun.

What is the role of the Smithsonian?

We challenge teachers in EdLab workshops to make sense of the Smithsonian by connecting museums, collections or experts to real life and current events. The Smithsonian has vast resources that include millions of objects, nineteen museums, a national zoo, expert curators, international research facilities and partnerships with museums and education groups around the globe. The question is, how do we use these museum resources to enrich the content taught in classrooms, promote research and critical thinking skills and give students ownership over the largest museum institution in the world?

Museums and classrooms both face the same difficulty in making content about the here and now. Ideas don’t just live in a textbook or under an exhibit vitrine. They come alive when learners can not only increase knowledge, but do something with it.

That makes me think of the Smithsonian’s mission: to increase and diffuse knowledge. The increase part isn’t so tough, but the diffusion implies action.

Does the content connections need to take place only at the Smithsonian?

No! In fact, I’ll give you an example:

I was chatting on Facebook this weekend with a teacher friend in South Africa. She’s curious to hear ideas on teaching ancient civilizations to her 5th graders. Ancient civilization is one of those topics that you either just love (like me- I have a B.A. in Ancient History and religious studies) or just really don’t.

The problem is that we teach Ancient history like it’s in the past- Mesopotamia “happened,” then Ancient Egypt “happened,” then Greece and then Rome. So on and so forth.

I asked her if any of the key themes she teaches about ancient history are still relevant and unsolved today. Themes like social organization, economic systems, city planning and community design, religious influence, art and culture exploration/demonstrations…Funny thing is that we still haven’t figured these themes out yet, so perhaps we should ask the 5th grade what their solutions might be! Better yet, let’s give the 5th grade a chance to research their questions, reach conclusions, document their understanding, then share those ideas with others actively trying to solve the world’s problems.

Challenging 5th graders in this way and giving them an opportunity to share what they’ve learned with real people doing real work means that students are active community participants and even global citizens. Seriously, in the 5th grade- in Ancient civilization class!

And where do museums come into the picture?

Museums are great places to find a grounded bit of research. In a sea of information, its really nice to have a raft to cling to! Museums and cultural institutions are all over the world and half the time they’ve fallen into distant memory as random statues, historic houses, etc. Try taking a look around your community and see how many places like this really exist.

Washington DC is filled with monuments to people most folks today have never even heard of!! And these are supposed to be national American heroes! I’m not trying to discourage anyone from coming to the Smithsonian, I’m just saying that you have more resources available than you might realize right where you live.

What are the benefits in participating in EdLab programs?

For starters, our teacher participants come away inspired and feel that the content they are responsible for is exciting.

Seriously, science is not just something you study, it’s something you do. Science is action-oriented and becomes a civic responsibility that even the first graders counting worms on the playground can participate in. Students, on the other hand, feel like school is fun and actually has a purpose! Who would of thought?

Just as a reminder, how can educators get involved?

1. We welcome any educator who is able to attend our workshops to attend! Summer is a great time to travel, and we’d be happy to have any educator in our workshops.
2. You can also get involved by exploring your local museums and cultural sites. Real connections can be found there, and it’s even better when you challenge your students to find those connections. Make them get out of the classroom and explore their local community.
3. Also, document the connections you find between your classroom content and real world learning. There is simply no reason we have to teach alone anymore, so share all of these ideas.
4. Check out our showcase of work being done by teachers on our blog
5. We’ve started a new Living Archive of resources and teacher-inspired connections, so get in there and share your ideas with us.
6. Thanks Jeff for telling us about Smithsonian’s EdLab

And the next series starts next week, so now is your chance to register and get involved!

• Classes register here
• Students register here
• Mentors register here

Students and classes that participate work through a set of challenge activities that build blogging skills and foster collaboration by all involved.

Quick facts:

• Anyone can participate using any blogging platform
• All levels of blogging skills welcome – complete beginners encouraged to join
• Teachers can tailor the challenges or incorporate theme however needed to fit in your time frame and curriculum

This post wouldn’t be complete without recognizing the tireless efforts of the volunteer coordinator of the challanges, Sue Wyatt. From everyone involved, we can’t thank you enough!

Don’t miss out! 

Once yearly we go through the entire Edublogger’s class blog list to ensure the list remains current, contains helpful resources and see what else we can do to help you to find class blogs for the grades and subjects you teach.

We’ve just completed the 2012 update!  We hope you find the list helps.

You can view the list by:

1. Going to our Check out our class blog list page.
2. Downloading our Edublogger’s class blog list PDF — handy if you want to print copies to share with others!
3. Scrolling to the bottom of this post to view our embedded Google Spreadsheet of the Edublogger’s class blog list.

Please let us know if you would like your class blog added to the list.  We add new blogs onto the list throughout the year and would love to add yours.

About The Edublogger’s Class Blog list

The Edublogger’s class blog list was originally created in 2008 for educators to use as a resource to:

• Get ideas on how class blogs are used with students.
• Check out ideas they can use with their students and on their own class blog.
• Make connections with classes in other countries.

Now 3 years since the list was first created:

• It’s still growing — the list is updated monthly to add new class blogs to the list.
• It’s the most visited page on this blog

The list is created by teachers who submit their class blogs to be added to it by leaving a comment on these posts.

Keeping the list current

To ensure that the class blog list remains current and contain helpful resources we go through the entire list once a year to remove any blogs that:

1. Have been deleted
2. No longer exist
3. Are no longer active (haven’t updated recently)
4. Have changed their privacy from public to private.

Improving the list

During the yearly update we also look at how we can improve the list.   This year we have made the following changes:

• We’ve changed to an embedded Google spreadsheet because it makes it easier to quickly update the list.
• We’re broken the class blog list into Grades; Subject Areas such as Maths, Science, English, History, LOTE, EFL /ESL; type of blog such as Library, School news.

Blogging Since

We’re also aware that with some many blogs on the list that educators needed a way to quickly scan the list while learning more about the age of specific blogs.

The solution was the Blogging Since information.  For example, 2004 means the blog has been used for class blogging since 2004 whereas 2009 means a blog with has been used as a class blog since 2009. A class blog with ‘Since’ and the date indicates the teacher has been blogging for awhile but is now using a different class blog URL.

I continue to be amazed with how long some of these blogs have been used for class blogging!

Is your Class Blog on the List?

If you want to add your class blog to this list (or update your class blog details) leave a comment on this post to share with us:

1. Your Class Blog title(s) and URL(s).
2. Grade level(s) of your student
3. If applicable. what subject areas or class blog category?  Refer to the category list on Our check out Class blogs page.
4. Country
5. Age of class blog.  Blogging since?
6. Feel free to add other information as educators refer to comments to create connections with other class blogs!

Please check the Check out Class Blogs list first before providing updated information.

And here’s the complete Edublogger’s Class Blog list:

Just click on their blog title to visit the class blog!

Stupid computer

Lately we’re getting more emails from parents and students asking us to help them find the class blog or explain how to do things like add comments.

After spending the past few days trying to find my own son’s class website I’m really feeling their frustration.  You’ve more chance of finding a needle in a haystack than a website if the web address is wrong and the site is set up to block search engines.

A class website can really help students with their learning and it doesn’t need to send your parents and students crazy trying to work out how to find it or use it.

Here’s our two simple tips to help reduce their frustrations:

1.  Create a Parent Handout

The best way of making sure both parents and your students know how to find and use your website is to explain it using a handout.

Check out Kathleen Morris’s 10 Steps to Navigating the 2KM and 2KJ Blog.  It’ll help you work out the type of information needed for a parent handout.

Make sure when you include your website address that you double check it is correct by clicking on the link  You would be amazed at the number of URLs we’re sent each day that are completely wrong or missing a letter.

Tips:

• We’ll often see teachers include www. in their website address.
• Websites like blogs and wikis generally don’t include www in their web address; adding it to your URL means the website takes longer to load because it needs to redirect to the correct URL.
• I use SnagIT to create quick screen captures with arrows, text and effects.  You can download a 30 free trial here!

2.  Gradually Introduce your website to your students

Never assume your students will know how to use your website.

Our experience is students generally don’t know what’s expected of them and too often teachers assume too much.

The same principles apply regardless if you are working with younger students, teenagers or adults and the type of website you are using — the more you guide them through the process of what’s involved the more they’ll get out of it.

Check out Kathleen Morris’s information under 4.  Introduce your blog to students – it’s a great example how to gradually introduce and build on their skills.

What do you think?

How else do you help your parents and students?  What other advice would you give teachers?

Let us know in the comments below and we will be sure to add it to the post!

Image of Stupid computer by f1uffster (Jeanie) licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

We’re always interested in programs that help teachers and their students connect with each other.

So when I heard about the Global Classroom Project I asked Michael Graffin to write a blog post to tell us more.

About the Global Classroom Project

The Global Classroom Project was co-founded by Deb Frazier (@frazierde) in Ohio, USA, and Michael Graffin (@mgraffin) in Perth, Western Australia.

Since its humble beginnings in April 2011, #globalclassroom has evolved under the leadership of @mgraffin into an online learning community, connecting teachers and students around the world.

This is our story.

When we began our 2011-12 Project, we had some goals in mind:

• We set out to help teachers improve their classroom practice, through collaborating and sharing expertise with teachers around the world …

• We set out to create a community which fosters global dialogue and discussion between teachers and students …

• We wanted our students to have regular opportunities to share, learn and collaborate with children around the world, helping them to discover our common humanity …

Global Classroom Manifesto

And we are succeeding beyond our wildest dreams …

We now find ourselves running a global educational network involving hundreds of teachers, and thousands of students, across 32 countries and 6 continents.

Our wiki, blog, Facebook, and Skype groups have proved to be  vibrant online spaces for teachers to connect, share, and collaborate globally …

And, to our astonishment, the monthly #globalclassroom Twittter chats, created by @mgraffin,  became the world’s first global education chats, open to all teachers interested in flattening their classroom walls.

We’ve created a global community.

We have succeeded in creating a true educational community, where teachers support each-other’s learning. find new friends, and make global connections which transform their teaching and learning spaces in unexpected and empowering ways.

Where else can you find a teacher in remote Nepal connecting his students with the world?

Or the teacher in Taiwan whose classroom has been transformed through her Skype connections and conversations with teachers worldwide?

Where else can you find such an amazingly diverse group of people, from all walks of life, who are keen to connect, share, and collaborate with you?

This is impacting on our students too …

Our teachers have created opportunities for their students (of all ages) to learn, share, and work with children around the world – through Edmodo, Skype, Wikis, VoiceThread and Flat Stanley exchanges.

We are teaching our students, through real-life connections, how to connect and collaborate globally; and who knows what impact this will have later in life?

Kids Speak 2011-12 (@frazierde)

And yet, this is just the beginning …

When we launched Global Classroom 2011-12 last year, we had no idea where it would ultimately lead. The connections, the learning, and the sharing amongst our members  has been astonishing, and the opportunities this project has afforded continue to surprise and inspire its creators.

Our 2011-12 project runs through to June 2012, and we look forward to sharing our members’ projects and students’ learning over the months to come.

If you’d like to join us, please join our wiki and fill out the registration form for your year level. You’d be most welcome.

Find Us Online:

Blog:             http://theglobalclassroomproject.wordpress.com
Wiki:              http://globalclassroom2011-12.wikispaces.com
Facebook:    http://facebook.com/groups/globalclassroom

Twitter:           Use the #globalclassroom hashtag

Skype:              Send a contact request to mgraffin, and ask to join the group
VoiceThread:  Send request to @frazierde (or email debfrazier4@ gmail.com)

About the Author

This guest post was written by Michael Graffin from Perth, Western Australia. He blogs at mgraffin.edublogs.org, and tweets as @mgraffin.

He co-founded The Global Classroom Project with Deb Frazier, from Ohio, USA. Deb blogs at Primary Perspective, and tweets as @frazierde.