Happily Blogging - examples of educational blogs

Taradale Primary School Blog
This is a great example of an educational blog. It is very colourful with lots of moving images and articles that entice you into investigating further.
On the left side are a myriad of ways to identify the visitors to the site, along with useful links to educational sites such as spellingcity.com and a video tour of the school and village.
In the middle of the page are articles which are accompanied by montages of moving photos. The articles depict activites that the school has been involved in and are written by students and members of the community. The topics range from the school gardening bee, to interviews with new students, competitions and eliciting ideas for a new school sign. There is a really interesting feature on one page called a glogster which appears to be a program which some students have used to create posters with captions.
This blog is aimed at the whole school community and there is something for every age group.

Room 10 Morrinsville Intermediate School
This is another excellent example of an educational blog, but quite different from the blog described above. It is not so much a school community blog as a class blog that is used by the students to aid their learning.
The blog does not look as "busy" as Taradale's but in some ways is easier to read, with its vibrant blue background and well laid out items.
The items are diverse and include surveys and live tallys on which football team will win, video presentations on short stories that the students have produced, interactive wordsearches that the students have compiled and even a cyberpet that the class have adopted!
This blog is aimed at stage 3 and 4.

Good ideas for teachers to use with their class

The following ideas come from the articles referenced below:

• Provide a world map on your blog which automatically traces where in the world visitors to your blog have come from. This can be achieved using the free software, ClustrMap. It provides students with a defined audience for their work which is very motivating (Pericles,2008,p.5).
• Provide results from a science experiment on your blog, so that other classes from around the world can comment on it and ask questions. Your class is then required to ensure their experiment is clearly defined and the results are accurate (Pericles,2008,p.5).
• Create a montage of photos taken throughout the year showing activities the students have participated in (Pericles,2008,p.4).
• Provide homework and event schedules on your blog so everyone has the latest information (Barone & Wright,2008,p.295).
• Create a daily vocabulary activity on your blog. Nominate a word which students then have to look up in the computer's thesaurus, write a sentence and draw a picture of (Barone & Wright,2008,p.295).
• Use WritingFix (writingfix.com) to provide a myriad of ideas for your students to write about. Students can keep clicking on suggested topics until they choose the one they want to write about (Barone & Wright,2008,p.298)

References:
Pericles, K. (2008). Happily blogging @ Belmore South. SCAN, 27(2), 4-6. Retrieved from http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/

Barone, D., & Wright, T. E. (2008). Literacy instruction with digital and media technologies.
The Reading Teacher, 62(4), 292-302

Copyright issues

Copying material from the internet
In order to copy material from the internet, you need to check each website for information pertaining specifically to use of that website's material. If there is no copyright information then you may copy material without permission, provided it is for research purposes and it is considered fair.

Research can be defined as "investigation into a subject in order to gain knowledge". It is worth noting that you do not need to be enrolled in a course to be doing research.

Fair use in terms of copying text from the internet, can be defined as 10% of the number of words or 1 chapter. If you are copying images, the act does not define the amount, but gives some guidelines based on the purpose of your research, the nature of the material, whether the material is for sale, whether copying can affect its value and what portion of material is being copied.

It would not be considered fair or for research purposes if you were to copy the material to others

Using music in student videos
Students can use music in videos they create provided the videos are used specifically for research purposes (see definition above) and are not viewed outside the classroom. If students wish to make them available to a wider audience e.g. screening for parents or in a competition, then they must seek permission from the copyright owner, unless the copyright has expired.

References:
Australian Copyright Council. (2007). Information Sheet G53v07. Research or Study. Retrieved September 30, 2009 from
http://www.copyright.org.au/pdf/acc/infosheets_pdf/g053.pdf/download

Australian Copyright Council. (2006). Information Sheet G38. Music: use in student films and home videos. Retrieved September 30, 2009 from
http://www.copyright.org.au/g038.pdf

Text Innovation

This is an excerpt from a Text Innovation I've created. It is based on a children's picture book Oh Hogwash, Sweet Pea! written by Ngareta Gabel and illustrated by Ali Teo and Astrid Jensen.

A "real" octopus video

Here is a really cool example of how an octopus can squeeze itself through a really tiny hole....

Kid's search engine

If you don't want to spend ages trawling through websites trying to find appropriate info for your students, go into this website. It filters stuff just for kids. I thought Yahoo Kids was particularly good at providing interesting websites about "octopus" which my daughter has to prepare a talk about, at school.
Kigose-the kid friendly search engine

Tree Octopus Video