Studyplans

I am still trying to make sure that my students can post on Live Journal. At the moment I am looking for the place that tells me if any comments were made. I can see how to make a comment but not how to read comments of others, if there are any.

I just posted a comment on Bee's Live Journal blog. I didn't see the comment after I posted it, though. I checked the box and put in my Live Journal name and password. Mmm. I'll have to check into that. She added a mood icon on her page which was really cool. I saw where to choose that, but didn't know what it would look like on the page. Now I do!

The PowerPoint presentation on blogs for week 2 was interesting to read. The blog on how to use weblogs in education was very helpful to me. I'll share both sites with students in about a month.

I looked at the student blogs as part of the assignment for week two. I was able to see the comments on a blog created on Live Journal. I thought about leaving a comment on the blogs I visited to let them know I had been there, but I see that the blogs are from last year and are abandoned now. Looking at the different styles helped me picture what I like best and is helping me choose a design for mine. In fact, I just changed the template for my Live Journal blog. I like the darker blue colors and love the blogs that include pictures! I think the chart that we are asked to fill out after looking at the student blogs would be quite useful when asking students to blog for a class. I also liked the rubric on Bee's blog for assessing blogs.

As for the teacher blogs, I found them a little too interesting. I wanted to read all of some them! In fact, I really liked the idea of keeping a log of tris,bacatins, conferences, etc. and hope to eventually use my blog for that. I wasn't sure what a teacher would write in a blog other than questions and comments for students. Now I have a better idea of how I can use a blog for classwork. I still have some trouble seeing how to read comments unless they are on Blogger.

On the community page, I see that I am one of the few who did not make my profile public. I have nothing on my profile, but it seems that maybe it should be public. I'm not sure what that means beyond this class. When I do make my blog public I see two entries that I had started last year and then deleted. I'm not sure why they show up or if anyone but me sees them. The old ones don't show up in the archives on my new blog.

I just signed up for Live Journal. It was quite easy to do, actually. I spent way to long looking at the many background choices. My new blog is at: www.livejournal.com/users/studyplans. I hope can find it again!

I'm creating a blog on American English Idioms for my classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I want the students to be able to post to it but no one else. I'm not sure how to set that up. I see the Friends page and how to change colors, but I'm not sure what to put in name space. Maybe their email address? As I'm reading it, maybe Friends have to be Live Journal useres. I set the blog up so that only Friends can comment. I'm also supposed to get an email when they do.
Of course, I set Blogger up to get an email when someone comments also, I think. However, I haven't gotten any email from Blogger telling me about comments, so I'm not sure I'm doing that correctly.

I have to remember to enter the questions in reverse order that I want them answered in. I just put the question with the most research and thought last, so now it is at the top of the list for the students.

The spell checker is easier for me to use in Live Journal, maybe because I use Firefox. Some times things like popup boxes don't work as well in Firefox, which I usually like.

It will be interesting to see how they like this blogging exercise.

Thanks to Ale, I have taken out the two "Edit Me" listings on the sidebar. They really annoyed me and I'm glad they are gone! It was easy to follow Ale's directions to remove them. Thanks Ale!
I haven't tried adding anything yet. That will be the next step.

I'm also looking into other free blogger hosting platforms. I want to create one to use with my classes this week.

Yesterday, Sunday, I wrote telling about my blogging adventures, but for some reason, it didn't post. When I clicked on "Publish Post", all looked well, but when I looked at my blog, Sunday's date was not there. Since it is still not there this morning, I think I am safe in assuming it is lost in cyberspace, never to return:(

My posting yesterday explained that I found the "Commented Links to Papers and Articles" page, thanks to Nathan. I also was able to see Ale's work on the discussion section and make some comments on that page. I would love to set something like this up for my students. Hopefully we'll learn how to do that later in the course. Maybe we didn't learn everything in the first week!?!

Anyway, I loved Week 1 and am anxious to see what happens in Week 2!

Today I posted my first comment to someone else's blog. I was surprised at how easy it was to do. This class may have created a blogging monster!

Ale suggested I go to CoLab 1.1 and then the discussion tab. I can't find CoLab 1.1 though. I'm still looking. This was in reference to working on the group assignment about links to articles and publications. That's my next adventure.

This morning I attended the chat with Anne Davis about how to use blogs in the classroom on Tapped In. It was interesting and informative. The hour really went by fast! I had participated in chats before but not on Tapped In, although I had heard a lot about it.
These are some of the things I learned and that I can use as I start to use a blog with a class, in no particular order (and I'll get to practice making bullets):<>

• Start with a class blog, making writing the reason for the blog.
  
• Ask questions that will prompt students to tell their thoughts.
  
• Another idea was to have a guest blogger. Students could guess who it is, or they could ask the guest questions. Another idea was to blog with another class. This way there would be an audience.
  
• I asked a question about student email addresses and she said she uses inactive ones, but that the don't need to have them.
  
• Put a disclaimer on the blog saying that the student blogs will not be perfect and thosse reaading them should be respectful and encourage the students' writing.
  

On another note, my last link looks right, even in properties, but it links to Microsoft. I have no idea why. Guess I still have some work to do on creating links.

I'm going to try a link again here. The URL is kind of long, but here goes. It is to an article entitled " Blogger Influence Raises Ethical Questions" . It is about whether blogs are becoming a new kind of journalism or whether they remain personal opinions.
<>

I just looked at the mlearning PowerPoint. It was really interesting! I'll have to study it more to see exactly what a moblog is, though. I had never heard of them before they were talked about in this group.

Aaron says he is subscribed to my blog, however he did that, and will be looking at it when I post more. I think the pressure is on to write something intelligent here. This may stretch my brain!

Speaking of stretching my brain, Elderbob - the Blog Boss (I love that name!) told me how to create links and where to look for more information about them. I'm going to try that next. Thanks, Elderbob.

Thanks to the many comments about 20six: http://www.20six.co.uk/, I went to their site and see that it is free and doesn't look too hard to understand. I'll look at it more closly later. For now, I am going to try to make their URL a link:0

I think I made a new discovery about links. It seems that when I added a URL in the link space, it made the title a link, even though the words I typed are there. I guess that if I want to make a link, I should put the name of what I am linking to in the title.
I also wonder if there is a way to know that I have read the comments, sort of like I know if I have read email.
Then, too, when someone makes a comment, do I comment to their comment in the comment section? Send them an email? Comment in the blog section? So many possibilities!
I am thrilled that I just found spell check. I'll try uploading a picture another day, maybe when I'm snowed in this weekend:)
I'm going to look to see if people add spaces between paragraphs. I wonder if there is a correct way to do that.
There are so many things to learn, I can barely sleep at night!

I think this quote is appropriate for me right now:
"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries." -- James Michener

I kept checking my email last night and this morning to see if anyone left comments. No one had, but I assumed that there were so many blogs for people to look at they just couldn't comment on them all.
Then I got an email from Aaron saying he didn't see the comment section. Well, neither did I! He suggested that I change templates. I did and, low and behold, there was the comment section. I tried several, then wanted to see what would happen if I went back to my original template. It now has a comment section, as you can see. Thanks, Aaron, for all of your help!
Now I can here from you all:)

Mmmm, nothing happened! The link didn't show up in the last post.
Here is the link to the blog about blog spammers:http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html
I guess I'll have to experiment more with links!

Also, I just looked at the pictures in Yahoo Groups. What a great looking group, including the moderators! I don't have a digital picture to put in but I'll try to get one in the next few days so that I can try adding it.

I have to say that the hardest part of this course so far has been figuring out my GMT. I think I have it now, though. New York = GMT-5 Now I just need to be able to use it! I wonder if I should change my time stamp on my blog? Does it matter?

I was also wondering it is better to make one long entry, like this one, or more short entries, like I have been making. I don't know which are more useful. I generally like my email in seperate entries so that I can delete them after I have read them. With long emails, I tend to get part of the way through them, then have to stop. The next time I look at them, I have to start all over.
I'm sure that I will not be able to read all of the information presented during the six weeks. I am hoping that I will still be able to access it later.

In the Jan. 12 edition of eSchool News, an article, "WIKALONG - A Wiki-margin for the Internet": http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2005/01/000434.php told about downloading a program that creates a wiki side bar in Firefox. Since the links on the site don't work now, I'm not going to download it. I can't picture what it does. I think I can have conversations with others about a webpage. Do I want to do this? Maybe the links will work tomorrow and I'll be able to understand more about it.

I see that even if blogger says it can't find data, it still manages to publish. My last attempt was published four times! Who would have thought blogger would lie to me?

On Stephen Down's OLDaily blog newsletter (?) for today, I see he talks about the same thing.
In the last post, the link was not live, so I'm going to try putting it in the space labeled link under the title space and see what happens.

I'm sharing two new things I learned about blogs in this entry.
First, I didn't know that blogs could be spammed. This is a link to an article entitiled "Search Engines Unite With Bloggers to Fight Spam": http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=29837
I also have discovered that by choosing the "Edit HTML" tag, I can paste the link into the post.
However, when I tried to post it before, I got and error message that said, "This document has no data." I don't know why. Then when I tried to publish it with out the link, I got the same message. Maybe the message has nothing to do with the link? I wonder why I got it and what it means.

As I sit here and watch the snow fly, I put this blog on the blog EFL/ESL wiki. I am so proud, though I'm not sure how I signed in and if I will ever find it again.
I looked at some of the other blogs, and can't wait to read and comment on them!
I am impressed by the number of people from all over the world who are in this class.
In fact, how many hours a day can I spend in this class?:-)