Different activity this week

Moved away from PCs for the first half this week - flipchart activity to demonstrate blogs and a newsfeed aggregator. Also discussed what makes a good blog (regular posts, mix of media, etc) and why blog anyway (share information, collaborate with others).

Unfortunately, only 8/18 in class today... for those who were here, what did you think?! Tell me if this helped you to learn, or if you'd like to suggest another activity for next time.

Top 5

Lee - regular posts, range of media
Beany - regular posts
Sarah B - regular posts
Michelle - regular posts
Ross & Matt - made their first blog posts for this class!!!

Newsfeed Aggregator

Bloglines.com is another aggregator site - very good for keeping up-to-date on multiple blogs (you can pick from subject areas) without having to open each site separately. This would be an alternative to Google Reader.

Top 5

Lauren M - very detailed postings
Duncan - detailed posts
Michelle - keeping regular updates
Vicky - keeping regular updates
Sarah B - keeping regular updates

Kalum, Ross & Matt will be making their first posts (since the class started) today! Who knows, maybe they'll even appear in next week's top 5.

Top 5 - and games!

This week's top 5:
Lee - keeping regular posts, reflective
Beany - keeping regular posts
Sarah B - keeping regular posts (and updated mid-week)
Vicky - keeping regular posts
Carrie - starting to keep regular posts

Also, following suggestion that you need to use games to learn theory, I've created a few to get you started http://www.teach-ict.com/xml/fionap/student.htm

About Blogs

Blogs have been around since:

Go and ask 'what is a newsfeed' - see if you can find out what a newsfeed (or web feed) is, what does RSS stand for, and what's an aggregator (or feed reader).

I'm using Google's web based application for this:

pay a blog host?!

What's the difference between a free blog and one you pay for? Check out blog.com

Link for theory

You'll need to know some theory about blogs, comments and RSS - good place to start at blog.co.uk

How are you progessing?! Still too many white spaces in there!

Top 5

Progress chart is already showing a growing difference between those who are actually working on this unit and those who have yet to start!

Top 5 blogs this week:-
Beany - keeping regular updates
Lee - keeping regular updates
Sarah W - made a good start, interesting blog
Vicky/Sarah B - keeping regular updates
David - created blog, good first post

Beany also comes out top for best evaluations; also liked Vicky's inclusion of a comparison with other evaluations. For those still to make a start on evaluations, these are the people to speak to!

This week's Top 5

Videos bombed last week - need to think of another means of getting multimedia onto blogs! Some are already embedding pic's though. Also, trying to hold attention of all in class just doesn't work... again need a new line of thinking here! Comments welcome from the class.

Top 5 blogs for this week:
Lauren M - created blog, great first posting with lots of detail
Beany - keeping up regular posting, fixed layout issues
Carrie - created blog, good first posting but need to fix images
Sarah B - keeping up regular posting
Vicky - starting to keep up regular posting