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edublogsPodcast 5: Peter Ford at ECML Ewan podcasts Peter Ford’s workshop. Took me 3 journeys to listen to the whole lot (over an hour long). Just when I was thinking listening to podcasts of presentations took to much time and were of poor quality, this changes my mind.

I was laughing like a manic at Peter’s poem of what the teacher replies to the lawyer. Got some strange looks walking along the road. Apart for the fun the podcast is full of great stuff affirming teachers and blogging.

The big problem with podcasts of this length is that you can’t quite remember all the good bits well enough to quote, but Ewan blogged them for us:

Peter Ford at Weblogs in Education, ECML, Graz

Lots of other interesting reports from Ewan to day and more podcasts.

Peter Ford is of course the organiser of the The Keepers Poetry Project and Ewan is the midwife of our offshoot The Dream Dragon.

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A while ago I set up Scottish Education Blogs to aggregate some Scot’s Edu bloggers and started one for Primary School Blogs.

Unfortunately the entries do not seem to get sorted properly by time. A few from a couple of days ago are at the top of the feed at the moment. The New SuprGlu RSS feeds seem to be ok.

A second problem is that the whole of a post is included, which can take up quite a lot of space for example this post in Sandaig Otters has 8 images 500 pixels heigh each, only the first shows on the Sandaig Otters page but everything shows up at Primary School Blogs.

I guess if I could understand a bit more php I could use MagpieRSS to do something similar.

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I decided it was time for some of my current class to try a bit of commenting on an other blog.

I took me until Wednesday to get round to it.

I showed them this post: Bullying: How to Cope. and they went off and wrote some comments on paper.

On Thursday the children typed them up and we sat around the whiteboard.

All we needed to do was post the comments this is what happened:


I had tested posting comments to The Blogging Zone from home but didn’t try from school.

Telling the children we will email the comments next week sounded a bit lame.

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I’ve been testing edublogs so end up reading James Farmer in the wordpress dashboard. Mr Farmer is one of the leading lights in the Educational blog world, the edublogs set up must be one of the most encouraging things for teachers thinking about blogging. So I was depressed to read You blog alone? that?s the point! where he states group blogs suck in education.

As a few group blogs are all I can manage to run in my class/school, this and associated posts are depressing to read.

Then I read Ewan I feel it’s essential to respect the ‘real worldness’ of the blog: open comments, open posting, with post-moderation of posts. Pre-moderation does not encourage responsible blogging, merely responsible policing by the teacher and state. and felt even lower.

I of course agree with both these sentiments, so where does this leave my efforts at blogging in Sandaig. I not only pre-moderate (spell grammar and sense check) but I suggest the direction and content of the posts. A fair amount of time we blog as a group all together on the whiteboard.

Well I guess it is a start, excuses include only have access to 2 internet connected PCs, I not only teaching blogging, the children are learning all sorts of other stuff at the same time etc. Also I feel for us blogs are an extension of the wall display and class assembly both activities I would often help with preparation and presentation by 10 year olds.

So I feel our use of blogging is justified and worth it, even though it doesn’t fit with an ideal. hopefully I can manage with a light enough touch that the children gain a sense of ownership and conversation.

We only been blogging for two years here and I feel it is early day to judge and evaluate, but even missing the ideal, I think it is worth going on. The is also a sense of open source/free in blogging and a blog maybe is whatever we want it to be. My most must read blog Daring Fireball (not edu) doesn’t even seem to have comment, though it is pretty much one voice. Anyway I’ll keep the expert words in mind and we will go our own way. (post petering out but I am still thinking)

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Ewan has been Finding time to blog. One of several thought provoking posts he produced today. Part of it is a defence of his posting rate (extremely good), explaining blogging as part of his professional development and thinking process.

I think this connects to some thing dear to Ewan’s heart getting blogs working in schools.

A reason there are not more classroom teachers blogging (with or without their classes) is just this, they cannot work in the same way as Ewan.

To blog confidently with a class you need a bit of practise, full time classroom teachers do not have the time to get a blogging habit, unless like me they start with non educational content.

Teacher’s working day just doesn’t have the time to be doing any research, thinking or blogging. Therefore we find it hard to get blogging. I have only once posted here during a working day, a very short joke-post at playtime.

I don’t think the odd inservice day will make someone a blogger, probably the best chance is to encourage student teachers to use it as a tool for reflection (see I wont do it and you can’t make me and Richard Ledingham.

Personally I feel almost constantly behind on reading, thinking and posting and I really try to keep up. Like a lot of worthwhile (IMO) practise in schools, we need more time to do it.

Ewan’s other post today are great reads too, I’ve not time to write anything, but be assured Ewan, you make me think.

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Popped over to cpdinict where I was testing wordpress to find the image problem fixed.

Great news for Edu bloggers, no excuse now.

Did a wee Podcast test too which seems to work as well. Something slightly strange going on with the categories, I put the podcast test in the podcast category and it shows up there without links.

Edublogs or the guy behind it James Farmer has also set up learnerblogs.org free blogs for school students.