Jonesieblog

I’m a relative newcomer to the blogging game. It’s not rocket science, but there are a few things that I wish I had been told when I started. I’m aware that there are a lot of new bloggers in East Lothian - this post is for you guys! I’ll explain how you can help your blog to get connected to the bigger world of blogs.

The blogosphere (a hideous term used to describe all the blogs out there) is held together by the connections between blogs. These connections do not form by themselves - you have to get out there and make them yourself. It’s like going to a party - if you stand in a corner and don’t speak to anyone then you are unlikely to have a good time!

Technorati is your friend

Technorati sits at the centre of the blogging universe. Register with Technorati (it’s free) and claim you blog. You will then get to something like this:

Not particularly impressive stats, but the number of links is an important measure of how widely your blog has been noticed. It’s nice, as time goes by, to see the numbers go up

Write some posts

Before you launch yourself onto the world of blogging, try to have several posts on your blog already. When bloggers become aware of a new blog, they are very likely to have a look at it. If they find an empty blog, or one where the last post was written 2 weeks ago, they may never come back! There’s good advice on launching your blog here.

Learn about RSS

RSS feeds are tiny files that each blog produces. They list all the recent posts on a blog, and can be used with an RSS reader to keep an eye on lots of blogs without having to go visit them all every day. Register with Bloglines (free) and add feeds from your favorite blogs. If you’re in Scottish Education, you might like to use this OPML file as a starting point. You can import this into Bloglines and you’ll get feeds from a whole bunch of education related blogs. More on the importance of RSS on edu.blogs.com.

If you want to get comments, make them

The most important way to get noticed is to start commenting on other people’s blogs. Be sure to enter the address of your blog in the relevant field, so that readers can easily get to your blog. Commenting on each other’s blogs is the central means of communication in the blogosphere. It’s good to talk

Learn about Trackbacks

The exact workings of trackbacks depend on what blogging software your are using, but basically a trackback is a message from one blog to another, saying “I mentioned this post on your blog.” If you look at the comments on some blog posts, you will see these trackbacks at the bottom. If you read an interesting blog post, and feel inspired to write about it, be sure to put a link to the post, and enter the address into the trackback field in your post editor if such a thing exists. That way the author of the original post and other readers of the post will become aware that you have joined the conversation.

Use you Blogroll

All blogs have some form of blogroll - a list of blogs that the author recommends. Use yours! Every blogger you list will notice that you’ve done so (via Technorati or a similar tool) and may potentially become one of your readers.

Have fun

Blogging is fun. Don’t let it become a chore

Stumble it!

In part 1, we set up the user database to store all your classes. Now it’s time to actually do some voting!

Labelling the devices

Your voting pads will have numbers 1 to 32 on them somewhere. Take the time to write these numbers on the top with indelible marker pen. Trust me, you’ll be sorry if you don’t.

Setting up a flipchart for voting with a class

• Open your flipchart
• Go to ACTIVote/session
• Click on “Named Mode”
• If the pupils in the list don’t match your class, click on “Users…” then select your class from the dialogue that appears

Classroom routines

Pupils will need to know which device is attached to their name. I would start by having the user database screen showing on the first lesson with ACTIVote. Ask pupils to take the device with the number beside their name, then to make a note of that number in their jotter/planner. In subsequent lessons, establish the routine that if the box is open at the front of the room, they take their device on the way in. This saves a bit of time.

At the end of the lesson, take the time to develop the good routine that the devices go back into the box in the right order, ready for the next class. If I can manage this level of organisation, anyone can!

Running ad-hoc votes the terror-free way

So, we’re finally ready to vote! Electronic voting systems allow every pupil to communicate directly with the teacher simultaneously and confidentially. That’s amazingly powerful, so we need to be careful not to mess it up!

• DON’T EVER DISPLAY RESULTS WITH PUPIL NAMES ON THE WHITEBOARD

If you need convincing of this, read my cautionary tale here.

When it comes to it, the process of running a vote is very simple:

• Take a fresh flipchart page (votes are stored on a one-per-page basis)
• Write up a question on the board
• Ask the class to work out the answer and write it down ( I find this works better than just giving them the choices from the start)
• Once they have answers, write up or reveal your multiple choices and click on the voting pad icon in your toolbar

You’ll now see a banner across the top of the screen with each pupil’s name on it. As the pupils vote, their names turn yellow.

Once everyone has voted, click again on the voting pad icon. If everyone has voted, you’ll be shown the summary screen. If not, you’ll be asked whether or not you want to give the slow turtles a chance to vote.

The summary screen is pretty self explanatory:

Option B is highlighted as correct here because I clicked on it - the system is not that clever! This screen and the right/wrong summary are the only screens you should show your class. Clicking on who answered what brings up the full vote results (different vote - no names here because I’m writing this at home on a machine that does not have my user database on it):

This “who answered what” screen is very useful - view it once you have frozen or switched the board to “no show”!

The picture above shows an example of a couple of pupils voting for F, when options A to D were only given. This will almost certainly happen in every class, but once they realise that you know who voted what, and that you will not allow them to take part in voting unless they take it seriously, they will soon stop.

Pre-prepared votes

Promethean have this excellent pair of flash animations showing how to use question master:

• Question Master Part 1
• Question Master Part 2

Formative Assessment with ACTIVote

This is the most important bit, so I’ll put it into a separate post…..

Stumble it!