I was out at Earl Kitchener last night for an after school in-service. @ggill and @ctstewar — two teachers who have been early adopters on the Commons — had arranged to pull their teachers together to show them this new tool, and it seemed like a great opportunity to run the site through its paces, …
Category archives: Commons
Introductory Video
Here is a brief walkthrough of the basic components of the HWDSB Commons. More videos like this will follow. The Commons is built using WordPress, an industry standard website/blogging platform used by millions of people around the word, so those anxious questions you have may be a google search away.
Blogging with ELL Students
I’ve been working with Mike Cimba in his General Life Skills class at Barton Secondary School. This is a class that not only struggles with English, but finds themselves faced with difficulties attempting to understand each other’s disparate native languages. We have set up a Group Blog to allow for contributions to conversations initiated both …
Five more Teachers…
I’ve been out promoting blogging quite a bit lately. Seems everyday there is another teacher who wants to take the learning happening in their classrooms and extend the conversation digitally in some way or another, beyond the walls of their room. I’ve always been a fan of students making their work visible, both to their …
Publish your Podcast
Creating a podcast and listing it in the iTunes directory takes a bit of work, but once it’s done, the “authentic audience” and ability to enable your students to “subscribe” to their shows, and those of their classmates, is a rich engagement option. The podcast station within your classroom (where the students record), can then …
Learning Commons and the Student Managed Digital Portfolio
Met with all of the Literacy Improvement Teachers from the board today to present on blogging. Here’s a brief keynote on why “blogging” is a relevant tool for the classroom: http://public.iwork.com/document/?a=p11584973&d=Commons.key I’m a big fan of WordPress as the publication platform of choice for blogs. I host two pilot WordPress communities on the web: Litcircuits, …
Continue reading “Learning Commons and the Student Managed Digital Portfolio”