Archive for July 12th, 2010

12
Jul

A great project

By Mr. Widdowson 1 Comment
Categories: Thoughts

Here at Porchester Junior School we have had a great time creating the Italy blog. We wanted to find out all about the country, as well as the football team, and the children had an absolute blast with finding out all sorts of information.

Making use of a wallwisher allowed us to receive ideas and suggestions, as well as useful links, from lots of people. These were great starting points for the children to them go and explore suitable websites and create their own blog posts.

Logging into, and creating their own blog posts was very easy. My class are used to using Typepad as a blogging platform, but quickly got to grips with the simple WordPress interface, and were posting articles left, right and centre.

We were able to add lots of interesting content to our posts – Wordles, YouTube videos, Animoto slideshows, and Zooburst Augmented Reality presentations. As well as add our own extras, we saw some fantastic new resources used on other blogs too – Voicethread, Spot the Ball, Dipity, and many shape collages.

Aside from creating content, we liked looking at what other schools had added to their blogs. The social aspect of the project, where children could “friend” each other was a brilliant addition too, and I hope that those children in my class who have really used this social feature continue to talk to the children in other schools that they have friended. The same goes for staff involved in the project, I hope we keep in touch and continue to discuss, create, and share more great resources.

I have placed an icon at the foot of every page on our school website, as well as a banner at the top of the main page, that link to our Italy blog, to show parents and friends of the school the excellent work we have created. I am hoping that Ofsted call soon, so that I can show them just how we have made use of technology to collaborate with other schools on an international project. This is something that the children will remember throughout their school lives.

Finally, I’d like to say a big thank you to John Sutton and Peter Ford who put this whole project together, and worked hard behind the scenes to get everything working smoothly. Thanks Guys  - you did a great job.

PS. I wrote an article for my own blog shortly after we started the project, and another as we approached the end of it. Both of them contain more thoughts about blogtheworldcup.

12
Jul

The project is complete!

By Mr Sutton 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

The World Cup is over, and with it, the Blogtheworldcup project draws to a close. The site will remain accessible for the foreseeable, so you’ll be able to round off any work that is still ongoing.

I’d really appreciate it if you took a little time to write a blogpost about your school’s experience of the project. I’m writing an article for an educational mag about it and I’d like to quote as many of you as I possibly could; without your input, the project would not have been the great success it has.

Questions I’m particularly interested in are:

  1. How easy did the children find the site to use?
  2. How much enjoyment/motivation did the children get from the social aspects of the site?
  3. Do you think the social aspects of the site taught anything about the safe use of social networking sites such as Facebook?
  4. Did you have to spend much time teaching children about the mechanics of the site?
  5. How could you make the site more collaborative?

I’d also love some quotes and feedback from children that used the site.

Thanks again for taking part in what has been a fantastic showcase for educational blogging. Blogtheolympics.net has been purchased, so watch this space!