Teaching With Technology Modules
This course is a practicum in which educators and future teachers learn how to implement researched-based practices for teaching with technology across their respective content areas. Course content is framed by the TPACK model of technology integration. Participants learn to guide instructional planning by formulating learning goals, matching pedagogical approaches to goals, identifying appropriate activities and assessment strategies, and choosing technology tools that most effectively support content.
Module 2: Blogging
Your first assignment in this course is to create a blog in which you will keep note of things you have learned in this course and how they impact your thinking about how to teach with technology. We are blessed that blogging is so easy to do because it makes thinking visible and thereby enables teachers and students to see each other’s thinking and reflect upon it. As you learned from your reading in the previous module about How People Learn, thinking about thinking is called metacognition, which is a powerful way to learn because it helps you become a better thinker.
Blogging for Teachers and Students
Begin by viewing the following video:
- What is a blog? https://youtu.be/oDxg5ODEXEQ
Read the following chapter on blogging in K-12 classrooms:
- Poth, R., D., Fernando, A., Okoye, R., & Karlin, M. (2020). Blogging for teachers and students. In Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. & Kimmons, R. The K-12 Educational Technology Handbook (1st ed.). EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/k12handbook/blogging
Read the following articles about teachers using blogs in their classes:
- Edpuzzle. (2019). 5 Top Teacher Blogs that are Crushing it! https://blog.edpuzzle.com/teacher-life/top-teacher-blogs/
- Morris, Kathleen. (2019). 13 Examples of Great Class Blogs! https://www.theedublogger.com/13-great-class-blogs/
Creating Your UD WordPress Blog
To create your UD WordPress Blog, follow these steps:
- Log in to https://sites.udel.edu. The first time you do this, you receive a site of your own.
- Follow this link to learn about the dashboard. Pay special attention to the menu on the left sidebar, and the admin bar across the top.
- To create your content, you make either "pages" or "posts". Pages are primarily static. Posts are for making your blog entries, which are generally displayed with the most recent one first.
- You can change the look and feel of your site by editing its themes and its menus. Please note, however, that "Fashionistas" is the default theme you get when you create your UD WordPress blog. Other themes can be more technically challenging, so if you change the theme and you start having trouble, you can always revert the theme to Fashionistas.
- By default, only you can see your website at first. After you create your blog, use the Settings-->Reading controls to make it readable by "anyone who is a registered user of sites.udel.edu – WordPress at UD".
- More detailed help is in the CampusPress knowledge base.
- Tutorial videos are at the CampusPress EduBlogs channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzORf1zYXXuO6J5wUF76qpg .
WordPress Video Tutorials
Listed below are video tutorial lessons from WordPress to help you learn to make your blog.
- What is a blog? https://youtu.be/oDxg5ODEXEQ
- How to Change Your Theme https://youtu.be/bB1KLox0SbQ
- How to Understand Pages vs Posts https://youtu.be/SCHBfd43E6o
- How to Add a New Post https://youtu.be/DdptqEFBseM
- How to Add a New Page https://youtu.be/BCAD5SlGavY
- How to Edit Posts and Pages https://youtu.be/MSCZGSP3cfk
- An Introduction to Widgets https://youtu.be/7W9kBiDGBVY
- How to Manage Comments https://youtu.be/Ca-e6ORFK78
Some of the assignments in this course require you to submit entries that you write in your blog. To submit such an entry, open your blog and navigate to the entry you want to submit. Copy its HTTP address from your browser’s address field, then paste that HTTP address in response to the assignment that is requesting it.
