Hi…my name is James…and I have used Blogger…
Hi James
This is my Blogger story…
I made a blog with Blogger. It is sponsored by Google. It is very easy to start, but…
it has one flaw. 
It has a navigation bar at the top of the blog. It seems very innocent. It has a simple link that says Next Blog». I clicked the link. It took me to another blog. I clicked it again. It took me to another blog. I clicked it three more times. It took me to a porn blog. That was when I decided that I would not use it in my school or recommend it to other teachers.
I have been looking for a solution for a long time. I found Blogger’s salvation. It is the code that hides the navigation bar. I found it on the web site for an eMINTS teacher. (I don’t remember who.) That let me this blogspot actually gave me the code to hide/unhide the nav bar. That was fancier than I wanted. I just wanted to get rid of it, so this blogspot worked better. Edit the HTML on the layout part of the dashboard and paste in this code after the template section:
#navbar-iframe {display: none !important;}
I once again feel safe in recommending Blogger to fellow teachers as a starting blog. I don’t have to worry about the navigation bar. Thanks for the code!
I just finished my first workshop for this year. It was on Making Classroom Web Pages with Blogs. It was open to all teachers in my district, only 4 came. I tried a new, modified format which had mixed results.
Workshop 2.0 - I wanted a workshop that was more interactive than a standard “sit and get” workshop.
Overall the workshop was a success. The participants learned a lot of what they wanted to know through our conversations and left with a classroom web page (actually 3 pages). I’ll do a 3 hour version of this workshop next month at our local Southwest Center for Educational Excellence. Upon reflection, I think there are some things I would like to change for next time.
- I showed them 3 places to make web pages: Blogger, Edublogs, and Wetpaint. I think I will leave out Blogger next time. The purpose I put it in was to show them how easy it is to make a blog, but it took more time than it was worth.
- I think I’ll invert the agenda and show Wetpaint first instead of last, since they have to sign up for it anyway to edit any pages. I ran out of time to show them more about Wetpaint, even though we used it for the whole workshop.
- I had a separate notes and agenda page. The notes page was unnecessary because it involved too much flipping back and forth. We could just use the agenda page for notes.
- Instruct the participants on how to flip back to the wiki on a separate tab to take notes. I don’t think they understood that it was Ok to edit the agenda. I could ask separate people to add various notes to the agenda during the workshop. Collaborative note-taking on a wiki is a very new idea, and may take a while to work out kinks.
- Most participants still wanted to use pen and paper to jot notes on. I guess I’ll give in and copy an agenda for them to take notes on.
- The beginning workshop writing prompt needs to be more open-ended, but not general in purpose. Maybe, “Why do you want create a web page?” This needs to be one wiki page instead as comments on a blog entry. They will also need an overlap task for those who finish their answer early.
- To get participants to use the treaded discussion, I need to teach it, give a stimulus video, then give them some time to think, type, and reflect.
- I need to be prepared to talk about Edublogs control panel.
- I should include how to add a Feedjit map and Voki script to the blog.
- Quit 5 minutes early to allow reflection time at the end to comment on a “Takeaway” Edublogs post.
There were also many things I liked.
- I loved using the Wetpaint wiki as an online handout while teaching about the Wetpaint wiki.
- I think it would be Ok to integrate more about 21st century skills: internet safety, blogs, wikis, connected networks, collaboration, Creative Commons, global focus, and the role of creativity in learning. They were curious about the direction technology is moving in education.
- The discussion was great.
- The examples of how I had used blogs, wikis, and my classroom web page in my classroom were very illustrative.
- They were fascinated by the Feedjit and Clustermaps map of visitors. (It’s one of my favorites, too.)
Workshop 2.0 is a new approach, but I think it has tremendous potential after some adjustments. Read/Write Web interactions will have to be taught, though. If you have ideas or comments, please leave them below.
- Since it was such a small group, the workshop turned out to be a good mix of lecture, discussion, hands-on, and one-on-one just-in-time learning.
I am teaching a workshop in my district on Monday on how to create classroom web pages.
The online handouts wiki for the workshop is at
I was going to just do it with blogs, but Wetpaint had a terrific template for creating classroom web pages. So, I added it in.
If you are in the workshop now head over to our first stop on the journey: Blogger.
You can also leave feedback in a comment to this post if you like.
My blog actually has 9 subscribers! I know three of them are just my feedreaders, but there are others beyond that. Welcome dear reader. Don’t feel neglected. I haven’t forgotten about you, but I just haven’t had time to post lately. My goal from the onset was to post at least once a month. I didn’t make that last month. I think that is because I have been doing a lot with my class website. I update that site every week and have even published two podcasts with my students. I am working on a third podcast, and I have started an after-school tech club to help produce frequent podcasts. I do plan to post another podcast here someday about how I started podcasting.
It is hard running two blogs. I wish I could combine the two, but they really have two different audiences. This blog is for you, me, and other teachers. It is sort of my professional learning journal, soapbox about education, and writing sandbox to write for you, the audience. My classroom web site is for my students and their parents.
I’m long on desire to innovate and short on time and energy to do so. How do teachers teach, grade, prepare lesson plans, integrate new teaching method and technologies, blog, lead workshops, and still have a family. There just isn’t enough time. I believe that a teacher’s most precious resource in the classroom is time. I haven’t figured out to make the most of that, but I’m working on it.
I want to teach with a project-based, student-centered approach. I know it is one of best ways to teach at higher levels of complexity. I’m just not sure how to plan that. I guess that is part of this blog is about, figuring out the best way to teach.
School 2.0 doesn’t just involve using web 2.0 tools in the classroom, it is about the pedagogy that comes with it. The interactivity of the new Read/Write Web tools give opportunities for expanding learning. How do I change my teaching to match my teaching philosophy? That’s what I’m here to figure out. Any suggestions or comments? </whine>
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