I have set up my class blog to hopefully be a place my students can go for help, and I’m also going to be doing discussions with one of my classes online.

So far, I have had one class, the class who will be using the forum later, post one comment on my blog. This didn’t go too badly; some students even figured out how to sign in too. It took a long time for me to be able to make usernames for all of them; edublogs was moving at a very sluggish pace. But I’m looking forward to starting the forum next week and seeing how it goes.

I have received some good feedback about my blog already. One student told me yesterday that he checked my blog because he forgot when something was due, and he thought my blog was “cool.” So I’ve helped one student! Another student commented that she thought my website was a helpful and fun idea. I’m hoping other students will also gain something from the work I’m putting in.

I think that sometimes students, as technological as they are, view any electronic assignments that teachers give them as too much work and trouble. Has anyone else noticed that at all? But I think it is still our duty as teachers to expose them to the academic benefits of the online world; in college they will be doing everything online!

I’m feeling good about what I’ve done this week. Now I just have to make sure I keep it up!

One of the aspects of my blog I am unsure of is how I should separate my different classes so that they can easily access what they need to. Here are my options:

Catergories – I read the edublogger’s explanation of pages and posts (which was written the day before my wedding!) and got the idea to use Categories. It was helpful to see Mr. Riggans’ Science Blog, which was linked in the post. I saw how he made sure to Categorize each post with the class it applied to.

Pages – I noticed that the Room 838 blog Mrs. Breaux uses pages to separate handouts, and then writes one post with bullet points for each of her classes. I was planning on making handouts available right in the post, so I guess it would take more time to copy a handout in twice. On the other hand, it would take less time to make just one post instead of having to make three posts each day for each of my three preps. Hmm…

For right now, I’m going to go with the categories idea. I like the way it looks, and I like that students can see all of their class posts together. However, if I get energy I may do the handouts on different pages thing. I like that.

Notice that I have chosen to do the things that take up more time…very typical of me.

I had quite a time getting feeds and e-mail subscriptions figured out for my class blog.

I used Sue Waters’ post to get me started. The post was very helpful and clear. However, things just didn’t seem to be working quite right.

I went a little e-mail subscription crazy. I tried the E-mail subscription widget provided, and it didn’t work. Then I worked with FeedBurner, as the post instructed. Neither the FeedBlitz or the R-mail html codes translated to a working widget, so I used FeedBurner’s option.

I got everything to work (I thought), but then when I tried to subscribe to my class bog on Bloglines, Bloglines couldn’t locate an RSS feed. Likewise, FeedBurner kept showing an error when I tried to get to my Feed.

Before bothering anybody, I decided to try to figure this out myself. By comparing my class blog to this one, I realized that the bottoms of the blogs looked different. On a hunch I changed my theme, and sure enough I had an RSS feed. I have no idea why, but hey!

Once I started exploring different options, I got picky. I didn’t like that FeedBurner only allowed an e-mail to be sent during a two-hour time period. My students and their parents have very different schedules, and I don’t want them to miss out on an e-mail just because they couldn’t access the Internet that day after it was posted.

So, instead of going through FeedBurner to FeedBlitz, I tried going right from the site itself. I think I have everything worked out now. My e-mail subscription is through FeedBlitz. I subscribed to it, and I will see soon if it works!

The adventures of a blog novice. Oh so exciting. It all seemed much more fascinating and frustrating when it was happening. I think some of this is over my head.

Why am I starting this blog? Ok. I survived my first year of teaching. My goal for my second year is to attempt to at least kind of know what I’m doing! One of the ways I think I can help myself is by maintaining this blog.

I used a class website last year to help my students stay informed, but I didn’t like the format of the site I used. I’m going to try using edublogs this year.

In order to figure out what I needed to do for my edublog, I first studied intensely Sue Waters’ amazing Edublogger site. If anyone is just starting an edublog, I highly recommed her. She explains things very simply. Thank you so much Sue!!! Then, because I like examples, I started…blogspying. I took a look at different classroom and personal blogs of teachers. Some of the blogs that impressed me the most were Huff English and Mr. B-G’s English Blog. Check these out on my Blogroll.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just discover blogs magically. My education coursework at The College of William and Mary (Go Tribe!!) included two educational technology classes. I first learned about blogs, along with other great resources like Odeo and United Streaming from my professor Dr. Mark Hofer. He was a great teacher; he explained things very clearly and modeled everything for us. So I had the idea, and I did maintain a blog for the class.

Then, in my next technology class, I met the incomparable Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. Check out her blog; you will see why I say she is incomparable. I was blown away by the things she and others were doing to explore how we can advance teaching. Is it just me, or are educators at the forefront of new technology use? She showed us wiki’s, Bloglines, and innumberable other resources. She inspired me to use a wiki when I student taught. Most of all, she impressed upon me the absolute necessity for teachers to help their students become even more technologically literate. Honestly, I am still overwhelmed by all the resources she gave us and all the ideas she brought up. I’m still confused about some of it.

Although I am totally sold to Sheryl’s beliefs, I have found it extremely difficult to make them happen. When I student taught, I did use wikis and WindowsMovieMaker with my students. We did do work on the computers. But I personally found myself unable to maintain a blog as I student taught. I was just trying to survive. In my first year of teaching, besides my website (which I struggled to maintain regularly) and online research for projects, I didn’t engage my students thoroughly in technology. And I truly was just trying to stay sane; there was no chance for a blog of my own.

Now that I am in my second year, I have two goals:

1. Maintain my classroom blog consistently (I owe it to my students).
2. Use my blog and the immense web resources at my disposal to improve my own teaching.

I DO want to eventually have blogs for my students, but I honestly need to see if I can do it for a year before I require my students to do it. I am hoping to use the forum on my classroom blog for one of my classes, so I will be subscribing students to that. But I think I need to take baby steps, considering I am only in my second year.

I really hope I can meet my goals. My first year teaching was the most ego crushing year of my life. But it taught me that I can’t do everything perfectly, and that I have the opportunity to get better. I’m thankful to be in a profession where I have that opportunity.