Resource Number 9

URL http://www.wordpress.com Keywords blogs, writing skills, digital storytelling

Wordpress
Category III Blogging Rationale

Educations mission is to provide critical solutions that significantly improve learning and the accessibility of education worldwide and an education blog can be a powerful and effective technology tool for students and teachers alike. Blogs can be very useful for students and teachers because they can be worked on at virtually any time, in any place with an Internetenabled computer. They also can be used by teachers to create a classroom that extends beyond the boundaries of the school premises. Using them is a way to engage students or colleagues trough a multifarious medium. Description Wordpress is web software you can use to create a fully functional website or blog. Resources required Wordpress is software that is installed on your web server. To create or edit your website, just login the site from a web browser and access the backend admin panel. This acts as a control to do everything from change the look & feel of the site with one click, to add new pages or posts, change themes, edit comment and more. Obligatory resources Desktop computer or laptop Reliable and stable Internet connection (broadband if possible)

Cost Partially free If your blog becomes very popular and grows in site traffic and branding beyond the given limitations, you will have to buy paid upgrades.

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The project Autonomous Personal Learning Networks for Language Teachers has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Setup and Configuration To set up a blog at Wordpress is very easy and the site offers good tutorials, too. You need to go to Wordpress.com and click the sign up button. After this, it is time to choose a domain name for your blog. This is the unique address that visitors will be using to check out your blog. Using yourblogname.wordpress.com is for free. If you are interested in using a custom domain name, you can purchase it. After getting the activation link on email you can get started. If you do not wish to create your own blog and you just want to comment on the others blogs, you can select Sign up for just a username. When youre signed in, youll see a tab at the top of the page saying My Blog. It shows all the blogs registered to your username, and enables you to quickly access your dashboard. When youre logged in, you can see two sets of dashboard menus. The left-hand navigation menus are a way to access almost all the powers of your blog. Your other menu is the toolbar across the top of your blog. You can adjust the Wordpress blog with these tools to your linking.

Styling In order to achieve customization of the site themes can be updated to match your expectations. There is a preselected number of themes which you can choose from. However, if you want to create your own unique design, you need to pay. Navigation and operation Widgets, tools or content that you can add, arrange, and remove from the sidebars of your blog, can help you to customize the content of your Wordpress blog sidebar. If you need help to fix an issue or require to take blogging to the next level, the Wordpress forums have lot of active members to guide and provide support.

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The project Autonomous Personal Learning Networks for Language Teachers has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Implementation methodology The benefits of using bogs are vast for educators not only in their lessons but also for their professional development. In addition to providing an excellent tool for communicating with students or colleague educators, they are able to: motivate students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms provide opportunities for students to read and write targeted contents serve as forums for collaboration and discussion. enable scaffolded learning or mentoring system be means of collaboration or professional presentations of educators Teaching/Learning ideas: As an educational tool, blogs may be integrated in a multi-faceted manner to accommodate all learners. Blogs can serve at least four basic functions. Classroom Management: A Wordpress blog can serve as a space to foster community of learners or educators. Setting up a blog is not difficult and updating is easy. Therefore, it can be used to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments, or act as a question and discussion springboard among educators. Collaboration: Blogs provide a space where both teachers and students can practice their writing and other skills with the advantage of an instant feedback. Teachers can post instructional tips enabling online mentoring. Learners can benefit from peer collaboration and review. Groups of students can also take part in cooperative learning activities that require conducting and sharing research findings, ideas, or suggestions. Discussions: A class blog opens the opportunity for learners and teachers to discuss topics regarding the lesson content, classroom management, games, etc.. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to react to ideas and reflect on learning. ePortfolios: A nicely organized and maintained Wordpress blog can be a storage place of students work as digital portfolios. Since older entries are archived, authors progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, the notion that a personal contribution will be published and viewed have a strong motivating effect to produce better writing.

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The project Autonomous Personal Learning Networks for Language Teachers has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Example of implementation Type of lesson: Composing an ePortfolio entry Lesson content: Building an ePortfolio entry Participating group: Teacher training workshop Target group: Educators and interested public Duration: 90 minutes (30 min. discussion and demonstration, 40 minutes preparing the presentation, 20 min. presenting draft results or ideas) Introduction: T presents the content and aim of today lesson to use the blog format for T personal development. The workshop trainer presents the benefits of the ePortfolio to educators. A paper published by JISC about ePortfolios (2007) identifies a range of purposes that e-portfolios might serve across a lifetime of learning: 1) Application providing evidence in support of an application for a job or for admission to further study. 2) Transition providing a richer picture of learners achievements and needs as they progress to a new environment, and supporting them through the process of transition 3) Learning, teaching and assessment supporting the process of learning through reflection, discussion and formative assessment, and providing evidence for summative assessment. 4)Personal development planning (PDP) and continuing professional development (CPD) supporting and evidencing the pursuit and achievement. Lead in: Trainer starts a discussion about the uses of professional ePortfolios. After a short discussion they elicit possible answers which can include some of the suggested answers above. Lesson flow: T divides trainees into groups of two and asks each group to come up with ideas that might appear on an ePortfolio and what kind of entries they suggest producing. Typically, these might be About me, My work, My projects, Contact me, Useful Classroom resources, etc. The blog can inform about upcoming projects, interesting studies, post samples of teachers work, adding multimedia content and similar. Realisation: Trainees following Ts technical and methodical instructions produce a blog entrance based on the outcome of the preparative stage. They choose photos, videos to accompany the ePortfolio entry they would like to present and they type in the blog information about it. Follow up: As a final step, contributions are commented and a discussion is opened about the entries presented.

Other issues In Wordpress, you can open or close individual pages to comments and you can select who can leave comments: anyone, logged in visitors, etc. Teaches can moderate comments on a school blog powered by Wordpress. Useful tips Wordpress allows you to use widgets in your sidebar. http://year9reaction.wordpress.com http://bakinginboots.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/catching-up-citrus-some-bubbly

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The project Autonomous Personal Learning Networks for Language Teachers has been funded with support from the European Commission. This document reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.