Edublogs Weekly Review: Introducing Teacher Challenges – Free Professional Development!

teacher challengeWe couldn’t be more excited to announce the start of a new series of free professional development for educators – something we are calling ‘Teacher Challenges’.

The online trainings will be open and public to anyone that would like to participate. While we will provide a suggested time line and set of activities, you can participate however you like, and once the courses are complete, they will remain live for future reference.

One of our main goals is to model how blogs can be used as effective and collaborative learning tools.

The first topic will be “30 days to kickstart your blogging” and will cover topics such as writing effective blogs posts, embedding media, and building readership.

Future topics will include building a Personal Learning Network (PLN), online student safety, and using the best of the free resources on the web.

Visit the Teacher Challenge homepage and subscribe to the blog there to stay up-to-date as we gear up to start the first challenge on January 10th!

This week in the Edublog world

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work?

Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Posts you might have missed

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

The Edublog Awards Site

Find hundreds of excellent resources for social media in education

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Summing it up

We hope that you will join us in the upcoming professional development series.

As 2010 comes to a close, we wish you the best to you and yours.

Happy holidays!

Edublogs Weekly Review: 5 reasons to visit the Edublog Awards site!

There are only a few days left to vote in the 2010 Edublog Awards, and we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know why you should both vote and visit the Edublog Award site:
ebawardlogo

  1. Find out who the edublogosphere thinks are the top blogs to follow
  2. Discover 42 of the top tweeters to instantly create or grow your PLN
  3. Learn from an excellent group of class blogs from around the globe
  4. See how students are using blogs in the classroom to enhance their learning
  5. Get ideas on how best to use audio and video in an educational setting

Plus much more!

This week in the Edublog world

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work?

Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

Inter.Connect.Ed

reflections on teaching and learning through technology

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Upcoming Webinars & Live Events

Join us for next week’s live events!

Wednesday the 15th @ 9:30am PSTWhat can you do with your Edublog!?

An informal chat where any of your blogging questions can be answered by our staff.

Thursday the 16th @ 4pm PSTEdublogs Fine Focus

Join us for our fortnightly “Fine Focus” sessions each week. In these sessions we range across a variety of topics and include discussion (“Talk Time”), how to use various applications (“Techie How To”), and using technology in the classroom (“Tools and Strategies”). In fact anything “e-” that is of interest to educators!

Learn more about our live events here!

Summing it up

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite nominees and come listen to the award ceremony – LIVE!

Winners will be announced at the live awards ceremony on Wednesday the 15th of December at 7pm EST USA!

Edublogs Weekly Review: The power of twitter, #edchat, and student blogging

I’ll be the first to admit that several years ago when I heard about twitter I was more than skeptical. I would occasionally check it out and just not really get it.

Today, while I don’t tweet as often as I’d like, I can’t imagine a day without checking the stream to see what my favorite educators, bloggers, and organizations are up to!

And if you are new to twitter, or just haven’t experienced one before, one of the best ways to understand the power of twitter to is participate in an #edchat. These open conversations discuss a wide range of relevant topics and are fast paced discussions with many excellent ideas and resources shared.

#edchats are held each Tuesday at 12pm EST/ 5pm GMT and 7pm EST/ 12pm GMT, and you can learn more about how to participate and what it is all about here.

In fact, this Tuesday the topic was the educational value of student blogging!

There are just a few examples of the hundreds of tweets about the topic in the widget below and you can see the entire discussion on the #edchat wiki here.

This week in the Edublog world

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work?

Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

The Brainy Bunch’s Blog

Berwick, Australia

A grade 3/4 class blog – check out that personalized menu!

This blog is on one of our Edublogs Campus sites.

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Upcoming Webinars & Live Events

Join us for next week’s live events!

Wednesday the 8th @ 9:30am PSTAll About Edublogs Campus

For new Campus site-admins or for those interested in learning more about Edublogs Campus.

Thursday the 9th @ 4pm PSTEdublogs Serendipity – PD Out Of A Blue Sky

Join us in our fortnightly unconference sessions. Bring along the burning issues and hot topics YOU would like to discuss. The topic is chosen by poll at the start of the session.

Learn more about our live events here!

Recent Posts You Might Have Missed

Summing it up

Twitter is fast becoming the best tool for professional learning and sharing – but I warn, it can be addicting!

This might be a good time to remind you to follow @edublogs too :)

Have a great week!

Edublogs Weekly Review: Attack of the web browsers and RockMelt wins!

It all started on a typical Monday morning when my web browser of choice, Chrome, just stopped working for me.

A quick google search lead nowhere – only that others experienced similar problems over the past year, but no help or advice. I deleted, reinstalled, upgraded, downgraded, and nothing – Chrome was not happy. So I reluctantly looked elsewhere for something new.

About the same time I was checking out our monthly stats on Edublogs.org in our Google Analytics account and came across this stat:

126 different browsers

What?! We had users using 126 different browsers visiting Edublogs.org over the past 30 days!

Nearly half where using Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox, Safari, and then Chrome.  Who knew (not me!), but there are also browsers such as Konqueror and Sea Monkey, and we had a couple hundred visits from the PlayStation Browser and the Nook eReader.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was also catching up on my favorite tech-geek podcast, CNET’s Buzz Out Loud. They were going on and on about a new web browser called RockMelt.

rockmeltIt is currently in invitation-only Beta mode (while they test and work out all the bugs), but I put in for an invitation and a few days later was happily using RockMelt.

The best feature about RockMelt is that within no time, I have set up all of my favorite blogs in the sidebar where it alerts me to new posts immediately. I am no longer dependent on Google Reader, which I for one am very happy about. Not because Google Reader isn’t good at what it does, but if I go a couple of days between checking in, I’ll never catch up! This real-time display of blogs lets me keep up in a non-intrusive way.

I can especially see teachers and students that want an easy way to follow blogs in their classes to find this feature useful and fun!

Oh, and RockMelt is built on Chrome, but it isn’t having the same problems I was having before.

You must have a facebook account to use RockMelt as facebook is highly integrated into the browsing experience. There’s a pretty good twitter feature built in too, but still no option to publish tweets directly from the app. (edit: Oops, actually there is – see the comments below!)

To see more about what it can do, you might like this video here.

If you’re interested, be one of the first three to leave a comment below and I’ll send you one of the invitations I have left. Or, you can sign up for your own on RockMelt.com.

This week in the Edublog world

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work?

Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

The Plugged In Portable

Grade 6 class blog with loads of resources!

St. Thomas, Ontario

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Upcoming Webinars & Live Events

Join us for next week’s live events!

Wednesday the 24th @ 9:30am PSTAll About Edublogs Campus

For new Campus site-admins or for those interested in learning more about Edublogs Campus.

Thursday the 25th @ 4pm PSTEdublogs Serendipity – PD Out Of A Blue Sky

Join us in our fortnightly unconference sessions. Bring along the burning issues and hot topics YOU would like to discuss. The topic is chosen by poll at the start of the session.

Learn more about our live events here!

Recent Posts You Might Have Missed

Summing it up

What’s your browser of choice? In your school or place of work do they let you use more than one?

With the use of add-ons and extensions Firefox and Chrome are certainly growing in popularity, and it will be interesting to see if any of the others can make a lasting impact.

Have a good rest of the week!

Edublogs Weekly Review: Taking blogging to infinity and beyond

nasalogo_twitter_reasonably_smallThis week we came across Mrs. T’s Fantastic Fifth Grade Bobcats class blog and this fun video post of a recent field trip to NASA.

In fact, we liked the blog so much that it is our blog of the week!

In addition, it really got us thinking about how blogging can be used to facilitate collaboration between classrooms and different organizations and experts such as NASA.

A little bit of fun research into the different offerings of NASA revealed a few tools and resources that you may find useful to add to your blog.

NASA and Twitter

Follow @NASAJPL_Edu for educationally related news and tweets from NASA. Some great images, videos, lesson ideas and more!

NASA hosts frequent Tweet-Ups at different locations, and if you sign up, you can be invited to come in for a VIP tour and question/answer period. How cool is that?

NASA TV

You can embed many videos from NASA right into any page or post on your blog. The most recent videos can be found here.

Or share this link to a live feed from the international space station on your blog. According to the NASA website, due to the orbit of the space station, there is a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes caught on video here!

Live Chats

NASA offers live chats frequently with different experts about many different topics. Recent chats discuss comets, the sun, the moon, fuel, and hurricanes – a wide variety that would be relevant to many different types of courses and age groups. Students and teachers can even submit questions before hand to get answered by the expert!

All of the recent chat transcripts – and information on upcoming ones – can be found here.

More NASA Resources

Find teaching and learning materials from NASA by searching through different levels, grades, subjects, and types.

Also, you can sign up to be on NASA’s news list to receive email updates and announcements about NASA’s educational programs, activities, and events.

Top #ebshare tweets from the week:

RT @edublogs: Check out all of the Edublogs live events in November – http://bit.ly/b3Fpsf Hope to see you there! #ebshare #culturainglesaMon Nov 01 23:27:28 via Panoramic moTweets


RT @edublogs: 34 Free Productivity Tools That Will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software via @inspired_clsrm – What a list! http://bit.lThu Nov 04 17:22:36 via web


Looking for ideas on how to help students evaluate web sites http://bit.ly/bLfa6Y #edchat #ebshareFri Oct 29 00:00:07 via web

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work? Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

Mrs. T’s Fantastic Fifth Grade Bobcats

An excellent example of what a class blog can be!

California, USA

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Summing it up

Besides NASA, are there other government, business, or non-profit organizations who’s online resources could really compliment your class or student blogs?

Let us know of any you find or how you use outside resources so that we can pass it on to others.

Have a great weekend!

Edublogs Weekly Review – Goblins, ghosts, and Halloween swag for your blog

smileAre you as excited about the chocolate and costume filled weekend ahead as we are?

We thought it might be fun to share a few of the Halloween resources we’ve come across which might make good additions to a weekend blog post or add a bit of holiday fun to your sidebar.

So here goes:

Online Pumpkin Carving

Use this web application from Spookathon.com to carve your own virtual pumpkin.  You can then download the carving as an image or embed the jack-o-lantern right inside of a post or page on your blog.

Halloween Widgets

PrimaryGames.com has kid friendly and fun widgets and resources such as puzzles and countdowns that can be put right on your blog.

Images and Avatars

One of our favorite free-use image sites, FindIcons.com, has many excellent images that would also make a great costume for your normal user or blog avatar as well!

Learning About Halloween

This post wouldn’t be complete without encouraging you to check out Larry Ferlazzo’s The Best Websites for Learning About Halloween list on his blog. This recently updated list is full of web resources on the history and cultural practices of both Halloween and The Day of the Dead.

Top #ebshare tweets from the week:

20 reasons why students should blog http://bit.ly/1HnfjW #edtechMon Oct 25 11:16:03 via TweetDeck


“A Timely Epiphany”…I’ve been reading and reflecting… http://is.gd/goyfo #sjsdblogs #stjosephschools #ebshareThu Oct 28 14:44:28 via Seesmic twhirl


Looking for ideas on how to help students evaluate web sites http://bit.ly/bLfa6Y #edchat #ebshareFri Oct 29 00:00:07 via web

Want to share a post, ask others to visit a blog for comments, or show off cool student work? Use the hashtag #ebshare to let us know so we can re-tweet it for you!

Featured Edublog of the Week

edu_featured_dir

Giles-Sweet Tech Blog

Chock-full of resources for students!

Ohio, USA

Find more great blogs like this one in our International Edublogs Directory.

Summing it up

If you know any additional Halloween resources to share, please leave a comment below.

Most importantly, everyone have a safe and happy Halloween!

Provide some details for your blog
No stress, you can always change this later on.
Use only lowercase letters (a-z) and numbers.
.edublogs.org

« Go back Register Account » Create a Site »