Jenny Turner - @msm - msm.wordpress.

com

BLAGGING BLOGGING
Amongst the many free blogging sites, posterous.com is probably the most suitable for school use as it allows unlimited sub-blogs, each of which can be password protected with a different password, thereby ensuring a level of online security suitable for school.
(Its also dead simple to use and looks pretty too!)
Easy Start Guide:

Blogging 101
How to make and curate blogs for use in MFL lessons

IF YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL, YOU CAN BLOG!

Blogs are great. They really The main types of blogs are. And theyre free, easy and considered here are: student-proof (most of the time. This guide will show you 1. Department/Faculty how to make the best of blogs (open access to all blogging to enhance your and sundry) teaching and quite probably also the prole of your 2. Class blogs (password department/faculty. All you will protected to allow access need to do is to keep up with to certain classes/groups/ the posting to ensure the clubs only) content is up-to-date, relevant and interesting to make 3. Personal teacher blogs students, parents, other (putting yourself out into teachers and your millions of cyberspace!) worldwide fans keep on coming back for more.

1. www.posterous.com 2. Create username, name of blog and a password (for your use) 3. Posterous Spaces > Space Settings > Privacy > Edit > Password protect 4. Look and Feel > Edit Theme Ready to go! Post to your blog by sending an email from your registered email address to: nameofblog@posterous.com Attach files (images, pdfs, word, audio, video etc) onto your email and they automatically appear on your post. Autopost to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many others to create an instant online social presence.

Best Posterous/school blogging links Joe Dale: http://tinyurl.com/joedale-posterous Setting up a moderated class blog with Posterous: http://tinyurl.com/brr58bn Primary Pete: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m Richard Byrne: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m

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FACULTY BLOGGING

Making a Departmental / Faculty Blog

Static webpages are fairly cumbersome to update, which is why a departmental blogsite which can be updated instantly and by email and by several people at any time is likely to be a more interesting option for departments/faculties. You could include up-to-date news on events in the faculty, trips, photos of lessons, activities or projects, videos of recent things going on, lots and lots of lovely links, course resources, letters home, revision literature...the list is endless. Ideally, a Faculty blog should be open access so that anyone can view it, so you would need to take into account child protection issues, such as not naming children or

PDFs, Word docs, PPTs...pretty any type of file shows up in full and can easily be downloaded or printed out.

publishing work from students without specic permission from parents, but you should be guided by your schools e-safety / child protection policy. Separate pages can be created which could include contact details for staff members, course/exam board information, trip information, project information, calendars and so on Only the main blog page is the one which is updated through normal blogging: any other page remains static and has to be updated through the posterous website, but you can add documents and photos etc to be shown on those pages too. Make sure that there is a link to the Faculty blog from the main school website and/or main MFL page on the school website and publicise the blogsite to students and parents. If you are feeling brave and your e-safety etc policies allow, you could also create a Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page (no need to befriend students!) a Flickr (photosharing) site and a YouTube site for your Faculty. If you set the posterous to autopost to each of these, then each time you post onto the blog, it will automatically

Create a calendar page by embedding a Google calendar with important Faculty and school dates into a separate Calendar page.

update the others, therefore students (and parents) who are are more likely to be on Facebook than anything else will get instant updates into their feeds of what is going on in the department.

Main things to consider: staff to be contributors open access autopost to other social networking sites check your e-safety policy (or write one yourself!) check permissions from parents get yourself linked to other MFL blogs list of useful links clear and easy to read theme - ensure it is accessible to all.
Just one example of a Dept blog.(still a work in progress!)

Create links to other sites of use to your readers and other blog sites. Interlink the blogs in this way so there is no excuse for students not being able to find the blog(s)!

http://stowmarketmfl.posterous.com

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Class blogging
This is perhaps the most exciting (and troublesome!) part of blogging at school: getting the students involved. They can develop their ICT and online awareness through posting to the private blog and sharing and communicating with each other through it. You can create an unlimited number of subblogs linked to your same email account for classes, groups or clubs. These should ideally be password protected to enable a degree of online security for the students and their work. I learned fast to provide a slip/sticker to students with the blog address, their email address and the blog password which they could then put into their planners/exercise books. Keyword tags are very helpful in organising a large number of posts (see the sidebar for examples) and when students post, they should include tags in their email. In the subject line after the blog title, simply type: ((tag1; tag2)) e.g. ((resources; grammar)) and posterous should do the rest. Watch out for the double brackets and the semi colon. You need not limited yourself to just two tags, as long as you use a semi-colon after each! Embedding code from other online providers can prove to be very worthwhile. Most online tools have an embed code which is usually found under share options. There are zillions of web games, tools, functions and gizmos which have an embed code. Copy and paste the code into the HTML part of the web posting interface. The content will work directly from the nal post, so its great for games. Try embedding a game from www.zondle.net into your class blog: it also keeps track of class scores for you and emails you at the end of a specied time period a leaderboard! You will need to sign up for it rst - its free.

1. Copy the html/embed code

CLASS BLOGGING

2. Create a post on your blog on the webpage, click the small blue HTML square and paste the code into the box. Go back to the normal post.

Add students in a class using their school email address as contributors and ensure they get daily email updates, otherwise they will be inundated with emails. .

3. The code becomes a game which can be played directly through the blog page!

Setting homework and embedding content

Train students to tag their work with their names, and make sure you tags your posts with keywords. This makes hunting for homework and posts about specific topics much easier!

Mark and provide feedback online - but dont forget that it will be visible to all who has access to the blog. Encourage students to collaborate and feedback to each other by using the blog comment functions. They should be logged in (with their registered email address) to do this so that no comments are anonymous.

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msm.wordpress.com
OK, so Im cheating a bit by not using posterous, but wordpress is a lot more versatile for my own blogsite as it allows me to add widgets and gizmos to my blog much more easily than posterous.

Your own teaching blog: ideas, resources, links, thoughts, projects, connections..
1.On trips, projects, days out etc, get students to email photos/text from their phones to the blog to provide a running commentary of events. 2. Blog with primary schools to help improve transition and give an idea of what MFL teaching at big school is like. Older students could blog videos teaching younger ones some language. 3. Create project blogs. We have separate ones for Languages Challenge and Languages Leaders Award programmes. 4.Create speaking/video diaries: students record/lm themselves on their mobiles and blog the audio /video les on a regular basis as homework to track speaking progress. 5.Your MFLAs could put together a series on online resources about their region, together with audio/video of them speaking. 6. Revision / lesson resources - simply attach the relevant les to your email. Great if you can train the students to access the blog if they are absent from your lesson and saves a lot of running around with photocopied sheets. 7. Create a free embeddable forum for FAQs, discussions and parental contact with www.nabble.com. Also, get instant student/ parental responses to letters etc by embedding Google Forms or another survey tool into a blog post. 8. Collaborate with another class in another country on the same project - work together and communicate through the blog. 9. Film and music reviews - together with a link to the lm, trailer, clips, music and online research. 10. Create QR codes which link to your blog posts; put posters of the QR code square (and no other info) around school and watch the interest they generate.

What next?
So you have your Faculty blogging and your classes blogging. You may even have convinced other colleagues in other faculties to blog as well. You might be blogging with schools and classes around the world, or you might be blogging about trips and projects with parents. Whats left? You! By making a blog, linking with other teachers on twitter (#mtwitterati) and sharing your ideas, resources and projects, you will nd so much to enrich your own teaching. Yo may prefer to use other blog providers for your own personal blog: I found that the gizmos that I wanted on my blog were very ddly to get into posterous. Its possible, but they need an advanced knowledge of HTML programming and this is quite time consuming if, like me, you had to start from the beginning! Suggested providers with no preference intended or specied are: edublogs.com wordpress.com blogger.com tumblr.com typepad.com

10 ideas to kick start your blog

BEST OF CLASS BLOGGING:

QUADBLOGGING.NET
Sign your blog up to be twinned with three other school blogs: share experiences, comment on each others work, learn about the world... We are twinned with Manchester, Virginia (USA) and Bangkok, Thailand. It need not be MFL related.

VOKI.COM
Create an avatar and make it speak with your voice or with its automatic voices! Embed the code into your post. Great for a bit of fun and creativity. Students can comment and feedback on each other.

IPADIO.COM
Register for free and download an app to record audio. You can set files to automatically upload or you can embed them. Great for instant sharing of audio made in the classroom and for listening exercise homework.

YOUTUBE.COM
Paste a youtube link into your email or web post and posterous will automatically convert it to play on your blog. Great for sharing class work with parents!

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