The Blogger Experience
This is the first hands-on activity of my segment here, and will be done rather early as I loathe blabbing when learning is in the doing. This entry is being written ahead of time and saved as a draft, and I will publish it after the participants have completed the activity.
Purpose(s): One outcome is that each team at the institute will create a weblog that they will continue to use for the rest of the institute. This is to demonstrate the notion of documenting projects in a public space, multi-authored weblog sites. The second layer is to explore the experience of using the Blogger site.
Setup: I will be asking the most technical experience person in each group to stand up. Their job is to watch, coach, and refrain from grabbing the mouse and keyboard. Next, I will ask for the person least experienced in blogs and/or technology to volunteer to be the person in the driver seat. Each group will be provided a basic set of instructions for creating a blogger account and site.
The Twist: I have created three sets of instructions (available as MS Word downloads):
The Aggregation: Once created, each group will let me know the URL for their team. I will quickly add this to a web aggregator I created at:
http://realgar.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/itl05/
as well as a Bloglines public collection:
http://bloglines.com/public/jademade/
The Reflection: Each group is than to pst a second blog entry, a reflection, including their ideas on:
Purpose(s): One outcome is that each team at the institute will create a weblog that they will continue to use for the rest of the institute. This is to demonstrate the notion of documenting projects in a public space, multi-authored weblog sites. The second layer is to explore the experience of using the Blogger site.
Setup: I will be asking the most technical experience person in each group to stand up. Their job is to watch, coach, and refrain from grabbing the mouse and keyboard. Next, I will ask for the person least experienced in blogs and/or technology to volunteer to be the person in the driver seat. Each group will be provided a basic set of instructions for creating a blogger account and site.
The Twist: I have created three sets of instructions (available as MS Word downloads):
- [blogger-setup-full.doc] Fully illustrated and lavishly explained steps, about 3 pages printed.
- [blogger-setup-med.doc] A text only series of explicit instructions
- [blogger-setup-lite.doc] A minimal set of instructions that basically reads, "go to Blogger.com" and click on "Create a Blog"
The Aggregation: Once created, each group will let me know the URL for their team. I will quickly add this to a web aggregator I created at:
http://realgar.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/itl05/
as well as a Bloglines public collection:
http://bloglines.com/public/jademade/
The Reflection: Each group is than to pst a second blog entry, a reflection, including their ideas on:
- Which set of directions did you use? How important was the level of detail in being able to use the Blogger site?
- How easy was the site to use? What elements of the experience influence this opinion?
- How would you compare the interface here to the one for say your course management system, your internal web based administrative systems?
- How does this compare to other tools for creating web pages (learning HTML, using Dreamweaver/FrontPage)?
- How much were you able to customize the blog? What would you like to be able to do?
- Did you try the “Next Blog” button? What happened? What does this mean for use of this site?
- What advantages / disadvantages does this present as a tool for use by teachers?
- If you have never written in a blog before, how did it feel to see your work published?
- What are some educational contexts this technology might be useful?
• permalinnk • posted 6/22/2005 07:50:00 AM •
