Week 6: Feb.18 - 25 Rounding Off

Week 6: Rounding Off

During this week participants will:

• Discuss the challenges of blog integration into their teaching contexts
• Plan and share blogging projects for the year 2008
• Assess their own learning and evaluate the workshop
• Ponder over the future of blogging (Optional)

Task 1 - Looking ahead - The Challenges of blog integration into our teaching

Plan your blogging project for 2008. The following questions may help you consider all relevant factors:

PLANNING YOUR BLOG

• BLOG NAME
• BLOG HOST (Blogger, Edublogs, or another blog host?) - remember each one offers different features which may suit your needs better.
• BLOG SAFETY: will you demand word verification? will comments be moderated?
• OWNER - who will start the blog? You? somebody else?
• ADMINISTRATOR(S) - Is this an individual project? Or will this be a team blog, with several teachers collaborating?
• WHEN WILL THE BLOG BE KEPT ACTIVE? (starting date?; ending date?)
• TOPIC - what will your blog be about?
• WHO WILL POST? - Just you? Or you and a friend? One of your classes? Perhaps everyone in your school?
• WHERE WILL AUTHORS POST FROM? School lab? Public PCs? Home computers? You may need to consider programmes such as
• HOW OFTEN WILL AUTHORS POST? - Once a week? Twice in a month? Once a term? If this is a class blog, you may need to consider how much class time you'll need to devote to it.
• WHY WILL AUTHORS POST? Will blogging be a class requirement? Does this blog aim at encouraging free expression? Deciding upon this is bound to affect your answers to the next question.
• EVALUATION - if this is a class blog, will bloggers be evaluated for their posts? If so, what will the criteria be? If the authors will be your learners, how will you deal with language mistakes?
• TARGET AUDIENCE - who will the posters be writing for? You for your students? Or you for colleagues in your country? Or your students for another class? Thinking of what kind of Internet connection your readers may have should be important when determining what kind of content you'll include (remember the more you embed, the harder it is for people on a slow connection to get access to your blog).
• PROMOTION - how will you make sure people get to know you have a blog waiting to be read? A poster in the school board? Will you post an announcement to Dekita? All depends on who you expect to read you....
• WIDGETS - what widgets will you embed to customize your template? (Refer to our Week Four discussion about Making your Blog Unique and remember it's not "just bells and whistles"!)

Task 2 - Share Blogging Projects for the year 2008

a. Post your project plan to your blog.

b. Reply to two projects posted by other participants. In your feedback, say what you particularly like about their projects, and ask them questions about aspects of their projects you find unclear.

c. Make any adjustments to your blogging project that you consider necessary, and leave a follow-up comment on our blog, if desired.

Task 3 - Evaluation time!

Please, answer our survey to help us get to know your views on the workshop.

The survey will be closed on Feb 25, 2008 at 12 AM GMT. Make sure to try it before then!

There is another important survey which has been prepared by the EVO Coordinating Team.

Your feedback is ESSENTIAL for all of us! Thanks a lot!

Task 4 - Ponder over the future of blogging (Optional)

See our Week Six Pageflakes for optional tasks related to the future of blogging.

Task 5 - Time to celebrate!