NEISD Bloggin’ Boot Camp Round 2

Personal Reflections

The spring semester began with the second round of the NEISD Bloggin’ Boot Camp. There were about 3 times as many participants this go-round and required a much larger room. I didn’t modify the agenda for any of the sessions, but I did learn that with more participants, you need more instructors. I’d like to give a special thanks to Sue Carlson for assisting when needed. There was one addition I included to provide additional support to participants in between sessions and that was a forum page so we could all communicate during the 10 week boot camp. To my surprise, it was not used. I’m thinking of making this a mandatory homework assignment during the next round. Teachers will then have practice using this particular Edublogs feature and hopefully implement the tool within their own blog. Once again, I asked for permission to publish participant’s links so you can see the results of their efforts. Here are the brave ones who agreed. Please feel free to leave comments. 

Session Agendas and Homework Assignments for Round 2:

Session 1: Getting Started: Learn more about what a blog is and why educators have their own personal or classroom blog. Setup your blog, customize settings, and choose your theme. Homework: Go blog hopping to get ideas

Session 2: Adding Content- Pages: Understand how pages are used on blogs. Set up an About Me and Contact page. Learn how to create a customized navigation menu. Homework: Create all of your pages.

Session 3: Adding Content- Posts: Understand how posts are used on personal blogs. Learn tips on writing effective posts and publish your first post. We will also cover appropriate commenting etiquette for you and your students. Homework: Comment on at least 5 participants’ blogs and publish your first post.

Session 4: Working with Widgets and Plugins: Understand how widgets are used on personal educator blogs. Learn about commonly used widgets and how to change/add to your sidebar. Also learn how categories and tags are used. Homework: Publish your second post.

Session 5: Cool Tools to Embed: Learn about easy to use online tools that you can embed into posts and pages to enhance the blogging experience. No Homework. You are now an official blogger:)

One thought on “NEISD Bloggin’ Boot Camp Round 2

  1. I love the forum feature. If educators experience it, I think they’ll find it valuable. Make it mandatory! 🙂

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