In the Term 1 Project, each of you published a post on your group’s blog. As the 2012-2013 school year progresses, we hope that you follow up on your action plan, and become personally invested in being an active blogger. We understand that blogging requires you to learn and develop a whole new set of “21st Century Skills” and that each of you are at different starting points in terms of knowledge and comfort level. We also realize that this process does not follow the same pace for each learner. We are here to support you, encourage you, engage in discussions with you, and push you to think critically about the issues facing informed, capable & compassionate global citizens today.
With that in mind, please blog continue to follow your own curiosity and interests, while developing your own strengths as a blogger and user of technology.
Here’s a list of suggested actions that you can do as an active blogger:
1. Read and comment on posts of other like-minded bloggers. When you do this, make sure you indicate the URL of your blog.
2. Set up a Twitter account and put your blog URL in your profile. Talk to your parents about privacy concerns like whether to include your last name in your profile. Remember that it is not cool to reveal the full names of your classmates (or any other personal information) in your posts.
3. Follow government officials and/or agencies (Susan Rice, State Department , John Kerry. etc) Be sure that the Twitter account is “verified”–a white check mark in a blue cloud.
4. Find and follow blogs that focus on topics that interest you as a blogger (make sure your posts are in line with your group blog’s focus). Here’s a link to a blog post called “World Watchdogs” that I found that has a list of 50 other blogs arranged by content. These are suggestions. But when you find a blog post that you think is relevant and interesting, look for a “Follow” button or “Subscribe by email.”
5. Create your own personal newspaper using Google Reader (you must have a gmail account to use this). Here you can add updates from newspapers and blogs from around the world via RSS feeds. Set this up so content from your favorite web sources comes to you instead of the other way around.
4. When you read a newspaper article that is of interest to you as a blogger, find out if the journalist has his/her own blog or follow him/her on Twitter. (some examples include: Erin Cunningham,Nick Kristof, and the NYTimes Blogs.) Retweet posts that are relevant to your area of interest.
5. When you receive a comment on a post, respond to it and/or go to the author’s blog, read a post, and leave a comment as a way to say “thanks!”
6. Add a “Like” button to your posts. When other edublogs users “Like” a post, go to their blogs, read and comment on posts.
7. Write new blog posts on follow-up topics or on new topics. Make sure you cite your sources, link appropriately and that you have read enough about the new topic. For those of you who worry about “how long it has to be,” you are in charge! It’s ok to be concise.
8. Share links to your new post on Twitter and Facebook.
9. Get people who don’t use FB and Twitter to follow your blog via email. Make sure there’s a widget that allows them to do this on your blog.
10. If you are not too comfortable writing new posts, try adding a new post with links to quality content or embedding a relevant and appropriate video.
I will keep updating this list as we go.
If you need help, ask!
Work at your own pace, but, please work!