Edublog Nominations!

According to the Edublog Awards website:

The Edublog Awards started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media.

After much thought and deliberation, here are my nominations:


Best individual blog -- Extended Comments For Students (by Ross Mannell) Mr. Mannell is an incredibly dedicated retired teacher from New South Wales, Australia. He connects with classes all over the world and is the definition of a global teacher.

Best new blog -- Salsich Team 5 (Jonah Salsich's Class Blog) This year, my friend Mr. Salsich moved from third grade up to fifth grade. His new blog is an outstanding example of why I loved being blogging buddies with him. The passion and creativity he brings to the classroom makes learning engaging and fun.

Best class blog -- Open the Door to B4  (Judy McKenzie's Class Blog) This grade 1/2/3 New Zealand class blog run by Mrs. McKenzie is delightful.  Although they are a rural community, the B4 blog is open for learning and sharing with the world.

Best student blog -- Heather's Perfect Posts This is one of the most difficult choices for a teacher to make. While I had several fabulous student bloggers in mind, I nominate Heather. This third grader consistently writes quality posts that include original images and thoughtful text. Heather makes an effort to comment back to readers who leave her a comment. Furthermore, Heather goes out into the blogophere and leaves thoughtful comments for other bloggers. She is a real giver!

Best ed tech / resource sharing blog --Langwitches (Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano) I learn so much for Silvia! She is a deep thinker and a generous educator. Langwitches is the model of a connected, collaborative learner.

Best teacher blog -- wwwatanabe by Tracy Watanabe Tracy is another powerful educational blogger who is passionate about integrating meaningful technology in the classroom. Her posts are rich in content and always provide links for further learning.

Best library / librarian blog -- Bulldog Reader's Blog (Julie Hembree) Every school should be lucky enough to have a librarian like Julie Hembree. She demonstrates what a 21st century library should be. 

Best individual tweeter -- Krista Moroder @edtechcoaching  Krista is an incredibly helpful person and was awarded ISTE Outstanding Young Educator last year. Her tweets are so useful, and one of them even connected me to a free trip to ISTE!  

Best twitter hashtag -- #comments4kids (Thanks William Chamberlain!) This hashtag is so valuable for promoting student blogging. With one tweet, my students have an audience for their writing. What a great way to connect bloggers!

Best free web tool -- Twitter I can't believe how much I learn each day from Twitter!

Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast -- Room 5 @ Melville Intermediate School (by Myles Webb) The middle school blog is rich with video documenting learning at this wonderful New Zealand school.

Best group blog -- Books to Africa Project This Seattle service project blog, organized by Julie Hembree, helped bring needed books to partner schools in South Africa. Great group effort!

Best open PD / unconference / webinar series -- Classroom 2.0 LIVE! A wonderful resource for learning! Not only are the webinars incredibly useful, but the links to resources are extensive.

Best educational use of a social network -- Student Blogging Challenge A great program for classroom blogs and individual student blogs. Each week, Sue Wyatt publishes a menu of weekly challenges to help build blogging skills and connect classes worldwide.  

Best mobile app -- Popplet   I love this app for creating word webs, story planning, and creating time lines. We take screenshots, as the lite version doesn't allow saving. 

Lifetime achievement -- Sue Wyatt (Creator of the Student Blogging Challenge) Sue Wyatt works tirelessly to promote student blogging. Her Student Blogging Challenge run twice and year, and the knowledge and connections she helps really help to promoting blogging in the classroom.

Good luck, everyone!

Learning How to Comment!

Most of Mrs. Yollis' new students are novices to the world of blogging. (A novice is a fancy word for someone who is new or inexperienced at something.) A few students know about blogging because they had a first grade blog with Mrs. Levy. 

Two students are familiar with blogging because their siblings, Hannah and Miriam, were in Mrs. Yollis' class last year. Both girls earned their own blogs by demonstrating responsible work habits and consistently contributing quality comments to the class blog.

Because most students are new, we will devote this post to the skill of composing a quality comment!

Blogging has many parts: the post, the comments, and the sidebar.

If you do a good job with all of the parts, your blog will be more interesting.

Today we will focus on quality comments!

Content is key!
In our class, we evaluate our blog comments.
A one-point comment is a general comment that doesn't add very much to the post. Example: I like your blog. Please visit mine! A two-point comment adds something to the comment conversation. A commenter might compliment the writer in a specific way or add new information. Another idea is to make a connection. Maybe the post reminds you of an experience that you've had. Share that connection!  Try to end your comment with a relevant question. That way, an interesting conversation can develop.

Here is a video made by Mrs. Yollis' students about How to Compose a Quality Comment!

It offers tips to help you take your comments to the next level!

We like to open our comments with a greeting and end with a closing. We choose to do this as it makes it easier for us to follow the conversation within a comment section.

Mrs. Smith, from Ontario, Canada, adds another excellent idea:
Give some information about where you are from and what grade you are in.
Thanks for a great tip, Mrs. Smith! 

Bianca, a student blogger from Mrs. Morris' class has a great new post about blogging etiquette. She has some great tips about blogging! Be sure to leave her a quality comment!

-For Advanced Bloggers-

Some bloggers like to use HTML code to make their comments better.  Learning to write HTML code, or HTML tags, is a somewhat simple way to take your comment to the next level.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a language.

*     *     *     *     *

To write HTML code, use the following symbols:

Important: Do not add a space between the HTML tag and the word or sentence.

 

                                                                                                     

1.  To put text in italics, place this HTML code around the text:

 

 

The sentence will look like this when published:

 

Bloggers should always proofread a comment before publishing.

                                                                                                     


2.  To make text bold, place this HTML code around the text:

                           

The sentence will look like this when published: 


Bloggers should always proofread a comment before publishing.

                                                                                                     


 
3.  To make a hyperlink, it gets a little tricky.

Use the following HTML code around the URL and add your own link word/words:

  [The URL is the address of the web page. It starts with http://www…]

The HTML code below:

  

Will become this hyperlink when published:

                                                                 Mrs. Yollis’ Website

Sometimes it is hard to remember the HTML codes. I keep an HTML word document on my desktop with all the common codes, especially the one to create a hyperlink. Here is a video demonstrating how easy it is to a create a hyperlink if you have the code set up in a Word doc.

If you like to add fun shapes...here are those codes!

What did you learn about quality commenting? 

 Why is it important to proofread a comment before pressing publish? 

Have you ever had a conversation in a comment section?