#pressedconf18 run by @nlafferty & @patlockley was inspiring, 12 hours of organised #WordPress in EDU tweets. Starting holidays head a buzz, best fun I’ve had on Twitter for a while. Much better use of twitter than news feed. Blog posts popping up archiving presentations too.
Word Press for Weans 2018 #pressedconf18
This is a summary of my presentation for PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter. I’ve pasted the text from the tweets, without the conference hash tags below.
I am @johnjohnston a primary school teacher in Scotland. I acted as ‘Product Owner’ for Glow Blogs from 2014 to 2016 & continue the role on a part time basis.
Glow is a service for to all schools & education establishments across Scotland.
Glow gives access to a number of different web services.
One of these services is Glow Blogs which runs on WordPress.
- Glow Blogs consist of 33 multisites
- Total number of blogs 219,834
- Total number of views in February 2018 1,600,074
- Number of blog users logging on in Feb 2018 243,199
All teachers and pupils in Scotland can have access to #GlowBlogs via a Single signon via RMUNIFY (shibboleth)
Development
#GlowBlogs developed & maintained by Scottish Government considerable amount of work going into dev, testing, security and data protection. This differs from many edu #WordPress set ups as changes developed relatively slowly.
Major customisations include shibboleth signon, user roles & privacy. Teachers/Pupils have slightly different permissions.
Blogs can be public, private or “Glow Only”
There is also an e-Portfolio facility added via a plugin.
How the Blogs are used
Glow Blogs are currently used for School Websites, Class Blogs, Project Blogs, Trips, Libraries, eportfolios. Blogs By Learners, Blogs for Learners (Resources, revision ect), collaborations, aggregations.
e-Portfolios
ePortfolios supported by plugin, custom taxonomy. ‘Profiles’ print or export to PDF. Pupil portfolio blogs can have sparkly unicorns or black vampire styles but the profiles that come out look clean and neat.
Pupils
Pupils can learn to be on the web but with <13 we have duty of care.
Pupils can create blogs. Cannot make blogs public.
A member of staff can make pupil’s blogs public. Pupils can be members of public blog and post publicly.
Examples
- Buzzing About Bees! | Woodlands Primary School Bee Project
- Daniel Dargue – Scottish Blacksmith in Training | A focus on the traditional style of Blacksmithing
- https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/uodedushare/
- Endeavour | Independent Project Based Learning on the Isle of Islay
- Glowing Posts | Collecting interesting #GlowBlogs Posts
Possibilities
Only scratched the surface of the potential of #WordPress the tools are in place, Scottish teachers and learners are exploring the possibilities but it is early days. We are tooled up for the future.
The first 10 mins of this Ep. 74 Douglas Rushkoff talks about the social media in schools. Links in my mind to @MrSMathsWizard’s tweet
Victoria Park pond in the evening light. 📷
Had a nice we walk this afternoon. Could see the last of the snow and the last of the snowdrops. A couple of peewits flapping around.
A Saturday in Tabs
The tabs left open from yesterday. The internet is a more fascinating place that I’ve got time for.
- The Archive (macOS) • Zettelkasten Method Looks like an interesting application for organising text. I keep a lot of stuff in txt files which very badly organised (I use search). This might be helpful. I am using the 60 day trial at the moment.
- PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter I am taking part in this on Thursday this week.
- Little grebe – Wikipedia Enjoying watching these on the Victoria Park pond at the moment.
- I am the Weekend – Beta Teacher Not read this yet.
- Doc Searls Weblog · Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
- The science of revision: nine ways pupils can revise for exams more effectively | Teacher Network | The Guardian
- John Sexton on Twitter: “is it just me – why are schools/teachers giving instruction to pupils via twitter? Many primary school – no one under 13 should be on twitter? Better ways to engage with pupils on line – I am sure Or am I missing something here???????” Nearly a month since John tweeted this. Still thinking about it.
- Read Write Respond – Read is to write, write is to respond. I find my self on Aaron Davis’ blog a lot these days. He is doing what I’d like to do if I could squeeze a few more hours into a day exploring the IndieWeb. Great to see a edublogger diving deep into this stuff.
- Ep. 74 Damien Williams “We Built It From Us” – Team Human A lin from Arron, I’ve bookmarked this podcast as it links with John’s tweet above.
- Creating a Deliberate Social Media Space for Students in School – Read Write Respond Another one from Arron, even more on social media in schools.
- A Walk In The Park | Checking out a couple of photos I posted to my blog with sunlit, just checking how they come through.
- AlphaSmart Neo2 | Jack Baty | Flickr I remember getting some of these in school years ago.
- FILM — Erland Cooper The first is beautiful movie “Solan Goose” (there turn out to be gannets), The music sounds good, I hope to watch/listen to the rest later.
- The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian this is linked everywhere, not too much on how we take it back but the Indieweb points the way.
Worth mentioning that a lot of these links are coming from micro.blog as well as my RSS reader.
2018-03-24
Glaswegian Parakeets amongst the spring buds, A changing sky and dabchicks on the pond.
I am taking part in PressED A WordPress & Education, Pedagogy & Research Conference on Twitter. Runs all day on #pressEDconf18. I’ll be talking #glowblogs at 19:05 BST 29-03-18 in about 10 tweets. Need to do a bit of thinking about how this will work.
@MarkRiches announces the closure of Makewaves. Although I never used the service it inspired me. Wonderful idea and much better than silo for education.
📚 The Little Red Chairs – Edna O’Brien Not sure this really worked for me. Felt like half a novel and then several short linked pieces. The violence was brutal. Maybe the unexplained and spaces helped but I thought there was something missing. ★★★