2OG BLOGS

Donal O’ Mahony, Portmarnock Community School, Ireland.

north County Dublin co-educational 825 students 12 – 18/19 years of age 61 full-time teachers

...Junior Certificate Examination ...Leaving Certificate Examination

10G/20G/ 30G – A JUNIOR CERTIFICATE GROUP

THE STUDENTS DIGITAL HISTORY...

As 10G, they used three online applications at a basic level

Moodle Blabberize – talking photos Google sites

They were all familiar with the WYSIWYG editor

Essential to many digital and social media

applications

What You See Is What You Get

In their Second Year I wanted to move to an application

that was easy to teach, that had useful digital media features that would support the history-syllabus

WORDPRESS SERVED BY EDUBLOGS

WordPress is a blogging application using the WYSYGYG editor I was very familiar with it from my own blogging

Edublogs is an Australian company that configures WordPress for teachers a small fee: fifty advert-free blogs, bulk creation of

blogs, one hundred themes, extra-features e.g. creating personalised headers.

THE BLOGGING PROJECT

Taught over one period per week 12.05 – 12.40 on Thursdays

In an ICT room with thirty functioning PC’s

Reliable broadband The students generally had good

internet access at home I had briefed their parents by letter,

presentation and got written permissions

At first a class blog – I created the posts they responded – figuring out what a blog is!

THEIR OWN BLOGS

Choose a person in history.....Within the Junior Certificate History syllabus there are key people in history whom students study.

Some of these are generic e.g. the life of a woman in Celtic Ireland, while some are specific, for example, a named Renaissance artist.

Create a number of postings

Respond to each others posts

Design using the WordPress themes Use text Create Hyperlinks Use images WYSIWYG editor Embed video (explanation of very basic

html)

Good quality internet search Good quality content Responsible online behaviour Plagiarism Netiquette Presentation skills Responsibilities of ownership

30 INDIVIDUAL BLOGS

20G Blogs

Anne Frank

John Hume

THEIR THOUGHTS...

AS THEIR TEACHER

Time

Risk

Constantly learning and relearning

Transformation of practice

www.elearningisland.ie

www.portmarnockcommunityschool.ie