Blogging requires passion an emotion which leaves out most people!

Durff was nice enough to drop by this blog and leave a comment about my last posting. As such, I found myself wanting to know who exactly Durff is. Well, it’s Mrs. Durff and she is an English teacher and blogger. I actually got the title of this post and the cartoon strip picture from her blog. I borrowed it and used it for this post. I hope she doesn’t mind. The URL for her blog is http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=54610

My favorite thing about her blog is the quote by Alvin Toffler under the heading “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler.” Inspiring! I also found this video at teacher tube as a result of Mrs. Durff's website. Enjoy!



Warm regards,

William Bishop (Bill)

Back to School

The school year is back in full swing and as usual this has been an eventful week. On Monday we had our institute day and I was fortuitous enough to be ask to develop a short video highlighting our High School’s Renaissance program. I used Microsoft Movie Maker along with some pictures from the Jostens’ National Renaissance Conference to complete the video. I received a lot of thoughtful comments from a number of the faculty and staff at my school regarding the video and that always makes one feel good.

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to teach three short sessions about blogs and wikis for our first ever school wide technology fair. Various sessions took place at the fair that covered a wide range of subjects. We had the blog/wiki session that I conducted, a moodle session, a clicker session, a riverdeep session, a library media session and the list goes on. I heard a few complaints from teachers about not having enough time to work in their classrooms before the start of school, but most of the teachers were excited about being introduced to these 21st century technologies. Of course, my system is very blessed with thoughtful and caring teachers who want to implement technology to help the teaching and learning process. As such, many of the teachers are currently working diligently on learning and implementing some of the technologies from our technology fair.
Wednesday we worked in our classrooms and had meetings with our departments and today the students returned. As a result of the Renaissance process, our Principal decided to have a school wide assembly to honor our student body, teachers, and new students. I will blog about this when I have a chance at the new blog that I developed for our Renaissance program. The URL for the blog is http://haleyvillerenaissance.blogspot.com/.

I created the blog at the beginning of the week to highlight some of the great things our school is doing to promote academic excellence. Currently, there is only one post there and it is about the Renaissance National Conference that we attended this summer. I hope to move forward and improve the blog as the year progresses.

Technorati Tags: renaissance, blog, blogging, wikis, school, lost johns

Blogging

Back to school: Back to blogging…

I am getting ready to teach some short sessions for a technology fair that we are having at our school on Tuesday. The fair and my presentation as well as the presentations of others are the result of the Alabama Best Practices Center and the 21 Century Learning Initiative.

Anyway, I am currently putting the final touches on a presentation for the sessions. I am using many of the slides that Patrick Crispen used in his blogging 101 presentation at the Alabama Educational Technology conference this summer. As such, special thanks go out to Patrick for all of his hard work.

Luckily, I was able to sit in on a couple of Patrick's presentations at the conference before making my own presentation about School 2.0. My presentation is currently online if you're interested in School 2.0. It is entitled Plunge into School 2.0... The exact URL to download the presentation is HERE.

Enough said!

Warm Regards,

William Bishop (Bill)

Blogging: It’s elementary, School 2.0, and Classroom 2.0

Blogging: It’s elementary, School 2.0, and Classroom 2.0

I had the opportunity to sit-in-on a couple of Patrick Crispen’s sessions at the 2007 AETC conference week before last and he had a great presentation on blogging 101 and blogger. You can download Patrick’s presentation on blogging here (It’s in zip format). Although I am very familiar with blogger, I found the presentation worthwhile and even learned a few new tricks and tips. Patrick always does a great job with his presentations. Such is to be expected of a graduate of the University of Alabama! If you are interested in elementary blogging and Patrick’s presentation doesn’t tell you everything you want to know about beginning a blog for yourself or with your classes, you should visit the following links...

E-School News article on Elementary Blogging

A post by Steve Dembo about Elementary Bloggers

A wiki with links to educational blogs

A wiki tied to Alabama Best Practices Center’s 21ST Century Initiative

John Norton’s bookmarks for the 21st Century Initiative (My blogs are here) Wow!

These should be enough to get you started. I would however point out that before you start blogging with your classes you should get your administrator’s approval. You should also make sure that your Acceptable Use Policy is up-to-date. And above all things you need to make sure that you keep your students safety in mind.

You can find a number of tips to help with the things you need to know about blogging at the ABPC wiki. I hope this helps administrators and teachers begin the move toward School 2.0 and Classroom 2.0 if they haven’t already made the move. Enjoy!

Note: In a future post I will discuss my presentation at the 2007 AETC (Plunge into school 2.0 and beyond: But don’t forget your PFDs). I am just waiting for them to get the 2007 presentations uploaded to their website.

Regards,

William Bishop (Bill)

Technorati Tags: blogging, elementary, education, patrick_crispen, blogging_links, abpc, john_norton, 21stCentury, teach42, eschoolnews, lostjohns, blogger, blogspot, aetc, william_bishop