Blogging Boot Camp

At the beginning of each school year, I teach the elements of blogging to my students. They each receive their own blog and we use class time to design and develop the skills necessary to become independent bloggers at the end of two weeks.

I call this portion of the year, Blogging Boot Camp because it is fast-paced, requires collaboration and teamwork, and is cognitively demanding. I’m sharing the outline below at the request of some of my blogging colleagues. I don’t attempt to teach all of the elements involved in blogging during this time. More advanced activities are introduced as the year progresses and they appear as an endnote.

I rely on the students to help each other during this process. I’ve discovered that, over the years, I now spend much less time with instruction and much more time interacting with the students. I produce a model of each element to follow and the students then create their version.

We use the “advanced” dashboard in WordPress (Edublogs version) as I want my students to be capable of generating their own blog if they choose at a later date. I believe that mastering the advanced dashboard is a very valuable skill to learn.

During boot camp, each student has admin privileges. At the conclusion, I change their status to editor as I want them to now focus on their writing. I return admin privileges to them over the winter break and allow them to modify their blogs before I change them back to editors. If they would like to make a quick change, they can request to be made temporary admins anytime – this usually occurs over a weekend.

In the beginning, they may add two widgets. The restrictions are that the widgets may not break school rules, nor can they have sound that plays when a page loads. All widgets must also fit in the chosen column. If not, I teach them how to edit simple HTML and attempt to make it fit.

I set up each blog with usernames and passwords prior to the start of the school year. Students may not change these and I keep the master list. I subscribe to the RSS feed of each student blog and check it daily for activity. At the conclusion of boot camp, students are free to publish their work without permission. I have rarely needed to delete a post by a student. They generally take blogging very seriously and quickly realize that they have an authentic audience that they want to impress.

Throughout the year, student writing reflects assignments and prompts given in class, as well as personal and reflective pieces of their choosing. I do not require them to publish their long form class writing, but I leave it as an option which many students eagerly choose to do.

Each lesson below represents approximately one hour of class time, although many students spend much more time of their own on some of these activities at home. Several have built in assessments so that I can check for their understanding. For example, there is a mastery quiz after presenting blogging vocabulary and a spellchecking exercise that demonstrates their skill using that tool.

Day 1

Blogging Vocabulary  | Log-in | Dashboard | General Settings

• Vocabulary: post, themes, columns, widgets, HTML, links, tags, categories, pages, draft, publish, avatar, embed, thumbnail
• Login: issue usernames and passwords, how to log in from multiple sources, check to see that all work
• Dashboard: investigate each collapsable menu in the dashboard and layout
• General settings: blog name and tagline

Day 2

Avatars  | Profile | Privacy | Themes | Backgrounds and Headers

• Avatars: define avatar and demonstrate how to create one. Students are given time to create one and must have one uploaded to their blog by the end of bootcamp.
• Profile: Fill in the profile section and stress first names only in blogging. Parents can request that an avatar name be given instead of using their real name. I select a name from their ancient history studies for them to use.
• Privacy: Describe the differences in privacy settings and how each might be used. Reinforce the importance of maintaining privacy while on the Internet at all time.
• Themes: Discuss common features of a blog and layout options. Some elements can be edited, others cannot. Students are given time to select a theme that fits their need. They may change and try out themes until boot camp ends, at which time they may not change until winter break.
• Background and headers: Demonstrate how to modify background, if it is an option, and how to change a header. I give out a source for possible headers and backgrounds and open a discussion on copyright. I also show and encourage the creation of custom headers using PowerPoint/Keynote and screen capture.

Day 3

Blog Links  | Categories | Widgets

• Blog links: Demonstrate how and why to add links to a blog. Students add a link to the class blog and three of their friend’s blogs.
• Categories: Demonstrate how to create categories for posts. Students add History, ELA, Math, Science, Personal, and Fun categories. They may add others as needed throughout the year.
• Widgets: Discuss, view, generate, and place a visitor widget on each blog. Students create a clustrmap widget to use on their blog.

Day 4

Widgets (2) | Tags  | Pages and Posts

• Widget(2): Discuss appropriate widgets and potential sources. Analyze embed codes and how to choose one that works. Students then select one widget that would like to add to their blog. Widgets must be finalized by end of boot camp.
• Tags: Discuss purpose of tags. View tag widgets and create “Tag Wordle.” Develop a list of possible tags to use in posts.
• Pages vs. Post: Demonstrate the difference between a page and a post and how to create each. Students create a page called “About Me.”

Day 5

Elements of a Post | Spellchecker | Kitchen Sink | Editing | Draft vs. Publish | New Post

• Elements of a post: View several blog posts, break down the elements of each, such as style and structure, media, length, use of formatting, etc.
• Spellchecker: Demonstrate how to use the spellchecker. Have students use the spellchecker on pre-generated text. What does the spellchecker catch and what does it “miss” in the composition? Stress the importance of using the spellchecker and first impressions of your readers.
• Kitchen sink: Demonstrate how to turn on the “advanced” editing palate known as the kitchen sink. What are the features of the kitchen sink and how are they used?
• Editing: Write a short post and use the editing tools to modify the text. Formal writing assignments should not contain color text and should use other formatting features sparingly. Personal writing and reflection may use the entire kitchen sink.
• Draft vs. publish: Demonstrate how to save a “draft” and how to “publish” a post. Also demonstrate how to unpublish a post and edit a draft.
• New Post: Students generate a short post about a favorite activity or hobby they participated in recently. This post is tagged and categorized as well. Publish and view student posts. Posts and blogs are shared with parents over the weekend.

Day 6

Embedded links | Styles | New Post

• Embedded links: Using the student generated post from day 5, demonstrate how to embed a link that opens in a new window. Students then find and embed a link of their own.
• Styles: Discuss the uses of headings and formatting of posts. View posts with various styles. How and why might these be used?
• New Post: Students generate and publish a short post that uses at least three formatting elements such as headings, bold and italics, block quotes. This post is tagged and categorized as well.

Day 7

Copyright and Creative Commons | Images | New Post

• Copyright and Creative Commons: Discuss the importance of copyright and relate it to student work. I demonstrate this by taking a student post and publishing it as my own. I also copy work from Wikipedia and publish it as my own. I then demonstrate how to find plagiarism using online tools. We discuss the use of image licenses on the Internet. Finally, I provide links to creative commons licensed images for use in future blog posts and how to acknowledge attribution.
• Images: Demonstrate how to upload and embed an image.
• New post: Students generate a post with an embedded image and attribution. This post is tagged and categorized as well.

Day 8

HTML | Comments

• HTML: Discuss the concept of computer coding to generate webpages. Demonstrate how to use the HTML editor when generating a post. Provide a list of basic HTML codes. Students view and contrast the post generated day six using the HTML tab. Demonstrate how code generated in WordPress can be used in other HTML supported applications like Google Earth. Copy and paste the code into a GE placemark and view the published formatting. I build on this lesson throughout the year as we need to either tweak HTML to fit our needs or generate our own in supported applications.
• Comments: How to add a comment and how to generate an appropriate comment with all the required elements. Post the features of a model comment.

Day 9

Video | New Post | Comments

• Video: Demonstrate how to embed a video using HTML. Example
• New Post: Students generate a short post that includes a video with tags.
• Comments: Students make a comment on one friend’s post.

Day 10

Copy and Pasting | Internet Footsteps

•  Copy and pasting: Show how to use the copy and paste feature in the kitchen sink for transferring work generated in other applications to a post.
• Internet footsteps: Discuss how to promote writing by visiting other blogs and leaving comments. Remind students that they can add new friends to their blogroll. Encourage safety on the Internet and review the purpose of writing using a blog. Provide links to selected class and student blogs and ask students to venture out and leave positive footprints as they travel around the world.

Introduced later in the year: plugins, writing for multiple blogs, templates, link categories, linking to images, embedding Google Docs, and keyboard shortcuts.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33859208@N00/5036291025 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503002894@N01/98601059

Resources

• How to set up a class blog
• Copyright and Creative Commons
• Avatars: Build your wild self, DoppelMe, Simpsons
• Backgrounds
• HTML tag chart
• Edublogs Elementary School Directory