We hope you have enjoyed the work of two Ontario bloggers over the past two days, Leigh Cassell and Michelle Parrish.
After two years of promoting connected learners, OSSEMOOC is updating its blogroll to feature active education bloggers in Ontario and beyond. You can see to the right ——>
how we are adding ACTIVE blogs to the site, curated so that you can find what you are looking for.
Please share your blog information with us in the form below. We will be removing links to blogs that are no longer active.
Thank you for your dedication to making your learning and thinking visible to others.
If you are not a blogger, please continue to visit this site so you might learn from your colleagues, and see examples of educators who believe in building our knowledge together.
Featured image shared under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-commercial license by Thomas Hawk.
Today we continue our series on how to make connections online.
Blogging is a way for educators to share their thinking, their learning and their practice. When we read a blog, and something resonates with us, we can start a conversation by leaving a comment on a blog.
Bloggers often set comments so that they will not appear until the blogger has had an opportunity to read and approve the comment first, so don’t be frustrated if you can’t see your comment on the blog right away. This is a way to prevent spam from being posted on the blog.
In particular, check out the student created list of success criteria for blog comments.
This screencast features the connecting by video work done on Tuesday night. Keep in mind that our final task for May will be creating a similar video where we ask you about “What is Your Next?”, and this will be our submission to the K12 Online Conference in 2015.
This screencast includes some brief learning about commenting on blogs.
Yesterday we looked at the options available for educators to begin a personal/professional blog for free. Today, we hope you will take ten minutes to actually begin creating your personal space for sharing and curating.
Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-commercial license by Thomas Hawk
We will guide you through the process of starting a blog at wordpress.com. The process is quite similar for other hosting sites, and all sites have extensive support available to walk you through the process of setting up your blog.
Begin entering the information. Your username will appear when you make comments on other WordPress blogs, so consider carefully what you want that to be, and be sure that it is reflective of you (i.e., your real name or your Twitter handle are good options).
Consider carefully the “blog address” as this is what you will use to drive readers to your site. Keep it simple and reflective of who you are.
Take a screenshot, or carefully record the set up information so that you will be able to log back into your site.
You are provided with a number of options. For now, we will stick with the free version. Choose “create blog”.
WordPress.com will now “walk you through” a number of steps to create your blog. Consider the purpose of your blog as you create a title and tagline (all of these can be edited later).
At some point in the process you will be asked to verify your account through the email address you originally provided.
In the email message, you will see an option to follow beginner tutorials.
You may need to log into your site from the email message. Use the information you carefully recorded when you set up the blog.
When you are creating a blog, there are two “sides” or “views” in the process. There is the public side, which is what others see when they visit your blog at the URL you have chosen. For example, it’s what you see right now at https://ossemooc.wordpress.com/.
When people navigate to my new blog, they see this front page, but with their own login information on the top black navigation bar.
The “other” side or view is the dashboard, where you create your posts and design your site.
To access your dashboard from your public view, click on the name of your blog in the top left, and choose dashboard.
WordPress.com has provided an excellent instructional video to help you understand and navigate the dashboard side of your blog.
Take some time to watch the video and play with some of the features on your new site.
As we move into the last week of our “10 minutes of Connecting” series, we continue on from our thinking about Collecting – Connecting – Curating – Collaborating to Creating and Sharing.
One of the easiest ways to own your own creative digital space is to start your own blog.
Shared under a Creative Commons attribution – non-commercial – Share-alike license by Konrad Glogowski
You have already started your “blogging” work by contributing to the “microblog” Twitter. When 140 characters isn’t enough, you need to create your own space to share your thinking and learning.
There are many reasons to start your own blog. Today we are considering the purpose of blogs, and how they can help us in our own learning.
Of course, not all our learning comes from our online connections. We learn from our f2f co-workers as well, when we take the time to sit down (or go for a walk) and talk about our work.
I am very fortunate to work in a center that highly values the building of personal relationships and the informal sharing of our work and learning.
We take time each month to celebrate birthdays and eat a special lunch together. It amazes me how much learning and how many new projects arise after we take this time to share the work we are doing in our different branches.
Today, I learned so much about the Aboriginal perspective on mathematics education. This is a completely new area of learning for me, and for those who are interested in learning more, here is a fabulous place to start your understanding: showmeyourmath.ca
Thank you so much to my colleague, Yvonne Morrison (EO, Aboriginal Education) for sharing her learning with me.
I hope you find this topic as fascinating and engaging as I did.
OSSEMOOC 