Chandell Asuncion

In the 2007-08 school year Kamehameha Schools started to implement Blogs as a tool for educators. As the year progressed many teachers used their blogs as an extension of their classroom, some used it in place of a classroom website, and some used it to chart their professional development and communicate with others in their field. As a result ideas came flooding in… Many lessons were learned and most have begun to refine their blogs and their blogging techniques.

If you are an educator and are looking for some examples of how blogs are being used in the classroom perhaps you will find some inspiration or form a new friendship from this short list of educators:

High School:

1. Ka Hulinu`u — The Highest Mark – AP Literature - by Laura Tavares. (AP Literature) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/latavare
2. Write Here, Right Now! – 9th Grade Language Arts – by Laura Tavares http://blogs.ksbe.edu/latavare9
3. Grade 10 English -10th Grade Language Arts – by Kim Enanoria http://blogs.ksbe.edu/kienanor
4. Mr. Rose’s Math blog - AP Calculus – Mr. Kawika Rose http://blogs.ksbe.edu/karose
5. Chemistry in the Community - The chemistry of everyday life - by Ms. Correia http://blogs.ksbe.edu/micorrei
6. Wahi a kekahi! – Mauloa ka`ike pono o Hawai’i! – By Kumu Akina http://blogs.ksbe.edu/adakina
7. Richard Hamasaki -Two Courses: Honors English 10 Hawaiian, Pacific and World Literature & Reading Enrichment http://blogs.ksbe.edu/rihamasa
   

Middle School:

1. Ideas to Inspire- Ms. Cathy Ikeda (Grade 6, 7 and 8th) A journey through my education, literacy and technology life (Middle School Reading Resource Teacher) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/caikeda
2. In the Art Studio – Ms. Nahulu Kirsch (Grades: 6,7, and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/aukirsch
3. Technology Class- Mr. Kerry Kamisato (Grades: 6, 7, and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/kekamisa
4. Grade 6 Social Studies- Ms. Amy Kaawaloa (Grade 6) We read, we interpret, we post, we learn http://blogs.ksbe.edu/amkaawal
5. Grade 6 Language Arts- Ms. Kapua Helm (Grade 6) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/mahelm/
6. Vocational Technology and Applied Math – with Mr. Jay Chow (Grades: 6, 7 and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/jachow
7. Drama – By Leslie Ahuna (Grades: 6, 7 and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/leahuna
8. Grade 8 Social Studies – by Ms. Makanui-Yoshida http://blogs.ksbe.edu/jemakanu
9. Uncle N8’s Workshop - Mr. Nate Javellana (Grades: 6, 7, and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/najavell/
10. Curriculum Corner – Mr. Scott DeSa (Grades: 6,7, and 8th) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/scdesa/

Elementary School:

1. Gayla S. Traylor (2nd Grade) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/gatraylo
2. My Technology Journey – As a Learner and a Teacher (Technology K-5) http://kamanu.wordpress.com/
3. Technology Class - Kumu Laea-Honda (Technology K-5) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/lihonda
4. Keiki Scientists! by Heather Chang (K-5) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/hechang
5. Elementary Art - Ms. Tana Rosehill (Grades 3, 4, and 5) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/tarosehi/
6. School Library – by Kanani DeSa (K-5) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/shdesa
7. Wailele a me Wailani – Andy Chung (Grade 5) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/anchung

Schools:

1. Hawaiian Culture & Curriculum Specialist - Mr. Kilohana Hirano (K-12) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/aahirano/
2. Technology in the Classroom- Ms. Chandell Asuncion (K-12) http://blogs.ksbe.edu/chasunci
3. Classified Ads: Internal blogs are used to share information within an institution and has been an extremely successful form of communication and a great resource.Shared at the Punahou Technology Summer Lab School.
4. Kamehameha Alumni Relations Office - Ms. Jodi Kimura http://blogs.ksbe.edu/hawaiialumni

K-12 School Libraries:

1. http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=School_libraries

Blog Spam

This blog post has been the victim of blog spam. As a result the comments for this post have been turned off. I will continue to develop this post as more of our teachers begin to utilize this powerful communication tool in their classrooms. Comments on this blog will be accepted via email. If you have a post like this one that contains more than 3 links, and  your post is open for comments, you could be a target for Blog spam.  The best solution is to turn off comments on post like these. Open the post, and uncheck “Allow Comments” and “Allow Pings” under ”Discussion”. However if the post is for a specific session and you need to interact with an audience consider opening the post for comments for a short period of time. Changing the name of the post using the “Post Slug” is a temporary solution.

Students of the 21^st Century will need to acquire a strong set of ethics, values, communication, and collaboration skills that allow them to prosper in a global economy. For these students the Internet is an essential part of their lives that must be closely supervised.

The Cyber Safety and Ethics Initiative (CSEI) http://www.rrcsei.org/research.html reports that children have unsupervised access to a computer and the internet at home as early as age 5, and that by age 7, 15% report that someone was mean to them online, while 7% admit they have been mean to someone online. We are seeing the onset of cyber bullying beginning in the second grade and it’s not always the adult predator. Reports show that 45% of the cases are friends victimizing friends.

One in three children ages 9-12 report they have committed some type of online deception, abuse or crime. They have posted personal information about themselves online, which might include their first and last name, their age, photos of themselves, where they go to school, the names of their parents, teachers and friends, where they hang out, and what teams they play on. Furthermore 23.2% admit to lying about their age online.

Reports also show that 1 in 4 children between the ages 9-18 report that they have been victimized online by one or more forms of abuse within the past school year that was not reported to a grown up.

During the past school year has someone…
1. used your password without your knowledge………..………11.9%
2. embarrassed you online………………………………………..10.3%
3. bullied or threatened you online…………………………….…..6.9%
4. requested pictures of you without clothes…………………….1.0%
5. showed you pictures of themselves without clothes…………2.3%
6. asked private things about your body…………………….…….1.5%
7. told you private things about their body…………………..….…2.3%

Five rules to keep your children safe online
1. Don’t post personal information and photos of yourself
2. People may not be who they say they are
3. Don’t open attachments from strangers
4. Tell an adult you trust if something online makes you feel uncomfortable
5. Meeting online strangers alone is dangerous

Provide your children an opportunity to share their online experiences with you by discussing what they are doing online.

Join Steve Dembo and educators around the world to take the 30 day challenge.  Each day Steven will post a new blog tip, and encourage users to share the blogs and their comments with each other.  The challenge officially kicked off on November 1st and will run until the end of November 2008. To be a part of this challenge or just pick up a new blogging skill each day mosey over to Steve Dembo’s blog at Day 1: It’s all about the “About” page. Your readers will want to know who the author is and what you will be writing about.

New as of October 1, 2008 we can now add .swf (flash) files to our KS Blogs.

Share an Audio/Visual Presentation Online
This is so exciting, now you can take your PowerPoint presentations, slide notes, and narration and convert them into a fast loading .swf file that can be easily viewed online.  Take a look at Kelly Cua’s Presentation “Land Divisions in Hawaii” to see an example of how this can be used in education.

Share Quick Loading Movie Clips Online – No more waiting!
This is also a great solution for those bulky movie clips that you want to post online.  Converting your .avi and .mov files to .swf makes them well “swiff” (.swf).  You will need a movie editing software that will allow you to import .avi, .wmm, or .mov files and export them as a .swf. I’ll cover the conversion in more detail in another blog post.

See a sample at http://blogs.ksbe.edu/dakim/2008/10/01/swf/

1. First upload the swf file, then send to editor, then click on the “Code tab” to get the full URL to the swf file. The full URL will start with http://… and end with .swf – Copy the full URL you will need it in the next step.

2. Click on  the silver “F” icon on the Visual text editor when writing a post

3. Paste the full URL to the swf file into the pop-up dialog box:

4. Enter 400 for width, then 300 for height when prompted. You can play with these numbers to see what works best if you are unsure of the file size.

5. Publish your post and test.

 KS Teachers who would like to be trained should contact:

1. HS: Your team leader
2. MS: Kerry Kamisato or Misty Inouye
3. ES: Liana Honda or Nani Pai

Request training for:

1. Using your KS Blog
2. Creating PowerPoint Presentations with Slide Notes and Narration
3. Using Adobe Breeze to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to .swf
4. Converting a .avi, .mov, or .wmm movie clip to a .swf (flash) file
5. Video taping student presentations & editing video
6. Recording Lessons for your Sub using Smart Board
7. Creating Interactive Smart Board lessons using Notebook 10
8. Using Microsoft Word for Research Writing / Papers.
9. Working with Images: Resize, add text, make selections etc..
10. Other: Share your training needs

Aloha,
Chandell

It’s not your mother’s refrigerator that’s for sure.

Today children are asking mom to put their “art work” online, in a blog designed to bring out the creativity within and receive feed back from family, friends and new acquaintances alike. Check out “Theblog Weemade” to see how budding artist of all ages are making use of social networks. http://theblog.weemade.com

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the stories these images could tell us about the hearts and minds of their creators.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Login to your WP blog, click on “Write” then “Posts”
2. Check to see that you have two tabs, “Visual” and “Code” (see Image 1)
3. Click on the “Visual” tab
4. Click on the last icon – Yellow circle with a “V” for embed Video
5. Paste the URL from the address bar on the page that contains your YouTube video selection. Do not copy the embed video code

Note: YouTube is blocked on the KS network.

If you don’t see two tabs:

1. Click on “Users” > “Your Profile”
2. Check in the box next to “Use the Visual Editor when writing”
   (see Image 3)
3. Return to “Write” then “Posts

If you still don’t see two tabs:

1. You may need to change browsers.
2. If you are on a Macintosh, use Firefox (see Image 1), Safari does not load the visual editor applet (see Image 2).

Image 1: Firefox 2.0.0.16 – Note there are two tabs, “Visual” and “Code”

Image 2: Safari 3.1.1. – Note there are no tabs.

Image 3: Turn on your Visual Editor

What are Trackbacks and Pingbacks?
Trackbacks and Pingbacks are powerful research communication tools that will notify authors that you have something to say in your blog about their published blog post, or vice-versa. The author must have their blog setup to “allow pings” in order for them to receive a notification.

• Use a pingback when you link to an authors article,
• Use a trackback if you did not provide a link back to the authors article, but you want them to be able to read your comments, and the comments from your blog visitors.

How do I use a Trackback and a Pingback?
Once you setup your blog preferences to allow pings (see image) all you have to do is add a url (of the original article) to your post. WordPress will notify the author. If you are not going to add a link (back to the original article) for your users, you need to paste the url(s) in the “trackbacks” field, so that WordPress can contact the author.

Step-by-Step Trackback Instructions

1. Copy the URL of the “really good post“
2. Write a new post in your own blog, add a title and your personal comments.
3. Paste the URL in the “Trackbacks” field
4. Append the “trackback” between two slashes - i.e. ”/trackback/”
5. Save and publish your post
6. Wordpress will “ping” the author, and notify and provide them a trackback to your post (comments about their article)

Using Pingbacks and Trackbacks: Linking to someone elses work
Here I’m adding a link to two different blog articles, “10 Video Tutorials for Learning Basic Web Design Skills“; written on Mashable.com, and “Why Johnny’s Professor Can’t Read“; by Will Richardson. Adding a visible link to the article creates a pingback. In addition I would like the author to be able to read all of the comments that are posted to my blog so I’ll also create a trackback (see instructions above). The pingback will notify the author, the trackback will allow the author to have a link posted in their blog, that tracks my post and all of the comments made to my post from their site. This is pretty powerful. While it respects the rights of the original author, it also recognizes the new  author and his audience.

Example 1: Shows the name of the Blog author (see yellow highlight) in their blog trackbacks section. I entered the following url in the trackbacks field when writing my blog post. http://mashable.com/2008/06/12/web-design-tutorials/trackback/

Example 2: This blog shows the entire “trackback comment post” and indicates comments that are added as a trackback in comments section. I entered the following url in the trackbacks field when writing my blog post. http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/why-johnnys-professor-cant-read/trackback/

Notice that in both examples I had to append “/trackback/” to the url in order for my blog post to show as a comment on their site.

Using Pingbacks and Trackbacks: Someone is linking to my work

Putting up a Blog is a lot like putting up a Web site, it might be on the internet, but until you advertise it, it is sitting out there without any customers/readers/users.  Using Pingbacks and Trackbacks on your own blog allows you to get a feel for the people in your audience, and to learn what articles are important to them. You’ll learn more about the people you are sharing with, what they write about, and who they reach out to.

 
Example 3: Email notice – One of  your readers has posted a blog entry (with a trackback) on their site, that refers to something that you wrote in your  blog.

Example 4: This example shows what a trackback comment looks like in the KS blog.

Working Within the Walls of a School  

After all of this, I have to say.. somethings just don’t work when you are working within the walls of a school or large institution.  If you are using a KS blog, and have all of the settings mentioned above set, you will receive trackbacks, however pingback notices don’t arrive. However if you are using pingbacks on a personal blog, the information above should work. I have included the dictionary definitions for trackback and pingback below.

Wordpress Glossary Definition of Trackback:
Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written on his blog, even if you don’t have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a textbook.

Wordpress Glossary Definition of Pingback:
Pingback lets you notify the author of an article if you link to his article (article on a blog, of course). If the links you include in an article you write on a blog lead to a blog which is pingback-enabled, then the author of that blog gets a notification in the form of a pingback that you linked to his article.

If you’re feeling really geeky you may want to check out the Pingback technical specification.

1. Upload the file to your blog.
2. Choose Link to: “File” – Then click the “Send to editor” button. This will place a coded link in the editor window.
3. Click Save or Publish

Darrell’s Sample Movie Clip
Source: Darrell Kim’s Sample Movie Clip (.mov format)

Mr. William Sullivan is a 5th grade teacher at Kamehameha Schools Hawai`i, who is writing a paper for his masters course titled: “What is Kamehameha Schools doing to close up the gap in the Digital Divide?” This got me thinking about my son who has fantastic design ideas. Ideas that could add to the functionality of products making them better for consumers. My son who is 14 years old, has grown up with computers. He knows how to do research on the internet, can communicate using email, and is part of an online social network. Yet, his ideas are still in the wrong hands (his own). He has computer skills and is hedging towards 21st century skills; however he is not there yet. When his skills allow him to be a productive part of his community, participate in an international arena, and compete in a global economy then he will have acquired the 21st century skills he needs to prosper.

I can personally remember having ideas when I was a child, and wondering what to do with them… who do I call, where do I write, and who can I share this with? Not knowing who to contact, I wasn’t able to share my ideas with anyone. Many of us, at one time or another, has had an idea that others would benefit from, but had no one to tell the idea to. No one that is that could take that idea and put it into production. This is one of the areas that business are seeing as a gap between themselves and their community that can be “closed up” with the use of modern technology and 21st century skills.

We can take a look at our local news stations, or at a national news station like CNN, who ask the community to become on-the-spot reporters, photographers and videographers, capturing the news as it happens.

Encyclopedia Britannica is also looking at “closing the gap” on information literacy, by asking experts and individuals in the community to become a part of their knowledge base. In the School Library Journal released on June 11, 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica announced the launch of their new Britannica site which is about to go the Wikipedia route with personalized modifications that allow experts and the public to create, document and share knowledge on its site.

“The main thrust of this initiative is to promote greater participation by both our expert contributors and readers,” says Britannica. The hope is that the new Britannica site will create an online community that will engage thousands of scholars and experts, as well as regular users.¹

Hardware and Software companies have been piloting this model for years, as they roll out “beta” versions of their software and ask a select group of volunteers to use their product and provide feedback. They receive feedback on what is not working and what they would like to have in future versions. Beta testers are valuable to these developers because each of the users have different computer hardware, use different platforms and versions, and can offer a wide range of testing.

The internet has allowed for a myriad of social networks to form and collaborate. Today each of us are able to become a digital citizen, build meaningful mentor, student relationships, and provide a community service, at our convenience, using online productivity tools. We are able to become part of a community and improve the conditions of that community with our participation.

The “digital divide” comes into play if we don’t know how to participate. The same problems I experienced as a child, exist today for those who do not have 21st century skills. Many people are isolated and do not have access to computers, the internet, and proper training. What are schools doing? What are teachers doing? What are families doing? What are districts doing? What is our country doing? What are you doing to help close the gap that is being created by the “digital divide”?

Do you have 21st century skills? Are you are part of a social network? Do you contribute to the knowledge base of a community with your skills? Are you a mentor for someone who is new in your field? Are you a student who is looking to gain knowledge from a social network? Are you using the internet to collaborate world-wide? Are you using internet productivity tools to participate in or manage a project or a team? These are just a few of the skills we will need to close the gap on the digital divide in the 21st century.

For the first time in our history, big cities and small rural communities are on level playing fields. Will the United States be the for-runners of the global economy a year from now?

____________________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1. By Debra Lau Whelan — School Library Journal, 6/11/2008 2:00:00 PM http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6569492 (062708)

If you are not already receiving Technology and Learning Magazine and Online Newsletter Subscription, you can get a preview of what they have to offer at their website. See their comprehensive eBook Library.

Here is just a sample of some of the titles you will find:

1. Web 2.0: from Curious to Competent
2. Do Our Students Measure Up? How to Define and Assess Student Technology Proficiency
3. Taking One-to-One Computing to the Next Level– Laptop Learning Lightens Up Simple Storage Solutions
4. Professional Development Through Just-in-Time Learning
5. New students, new tools, new possibilities — Creating digital learning environments
6. Guide to Classroom Presentations — Harnessing the Potential of Interactive Technologies, Media Savvy for Today’s Students and Teachers
7. The Why and How of Interactive Whiteboards — Making a Difference, Tips and Tutorials for Purchase and Use
8. Keeping Students Safe Online — Securing the Learning Environment, Addressing the Challenges of Internet-Assisted Learning
9. PC Management in the Classroom: Kids, Computers, and Control
10. 1:1 Computing Guidebook
11. Digital Media in the Classroom — The Art of Digital Storytelling

And Much more…..