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Rubric for assessing blogs
Found a sample of a rubric for EL which we may adapt for assessing the postings by our students. Score of 0-5 were assigned to the following domains:
1. Regularity
– of posts, how often, the frequency
2. Extra exposure to language
– use of language beyond classroom, through self-reading
3. Reflection
– of things heard/learnt in/outside classroom
4. Organisation and Vocabulary
– of thoughts, of words used (esp new ones)
5. Accuracy
– grammar, typo
[source: Edubloggers Link Feed]
Blogs under ‘control’
During the sharing on last week, one issue that was raised: “If we were to allow students to create their blogs in blogger.com, how can we manage the blogs, which include who are the people viewing, the things put up etc?”
The key word here is _manage_, but control could be the meaning from within.
In time to come, I am quite sure that many, if not all, vendors will build in a blog function in their LMS/CMS. This would allow us the control we desired. But is this as desirable as it seems, especially if we place our students in the center, and think from their perspectives?
Personally, I believe that this is a great drawback on blog itself, as a platform per se. Youngsters worldwide are readily embracing blogs because of one key thing in blog — the sense of ownership.
Hosting blogs in a controlled environment such as a LMS/CMS is giving up much of these ownership. The people who are allowed to view my blogs may be restricted, the things that I am going to blog is likely to be restricted, the look and feel of my blog is going to be restricted etc etc.
Blogs on free platform will free our students from these. It will return this sense of ownership to them coz they are virtually in control of everything.
To control or not to control, each has its (dis)advantages, so its something we may want to park at the back of our mind during our planning stage.
There is this reflection posted by Will Richardson expressing his thoughts about blogs not just be outside CMS but “should be outside school altogether”. Check it out.
Edublog Sharing with DDMers
Thanks to Seng Chee for allowing me to share at his class in NIE this afternoon. Was warmly greeted by the HOD ITs who were attending their DDM course. Quite a number of these fellow teachers have heard of blogs and one of the teachers had allowed his students to use blog for their weekly journals.
A few concerns were raised during the sharing, which included copyright, vulgarity issues. Really glad these were brought up as I am sure these are common concerns by many of us. Thanks to the active questioning, as well as contribution of ideas by the wonderful audience, have managed to prevent a boring workshop 🙂
Weiying was with me and she had helped me advertised on the upcoming Edublog Workshop to be held at Nan Chiau High School on 2nd Feb, 1430hr. Almost forgotten about this. Truly hope some of the teachers belonging to the HODs’ schools can make it to the workshop too.
For those who may be interested, the ppt slides used during the workshop can be found here. A step-by-step HOWTO to account creation in blogger.com is available here too.
Another round of blogvangelism completed, cheers!
International Weblog Workshop
Found this great initiative via Weblogg-ed while clearing feeds in bloglines this morning.
The 6-week course is organised by Aaron Campbell, Barbara Dieu and Graham Stanley, with numeorus other facilitators including Anne Davis, James Farmer, Will Richardson etc.
Tried applying to join the course, not sure if it is too late, but thought it would be a great learning experience seeing how the course is going to run, with experts and participants all over the globe.
In the meantime, waiting patiently for the acceptance reply … 🙂