October 23

Y.A.P.P.Y.

One of the most important things to teach students about being online is how to stay safe. The internet is a gateway to the world; if we have certain rules for our children in the physical world to keep them safe such as wearing a seat belt, helmet, protective hockey gear, etc. then we must do the same for them when they are online.

The Web is a reality in our lives today. We live in a connected world, sometimes whether we like it or not. We email, text, phone, Facebook, Instagram, tweet, Skype and so on in order to stay informed or stay connected with others.

As a blogging class, it is my duty to not only teach students about blogging but how to stay safe while doing so.

Y.A.P.P.Y. is an acronym the class learned last week. Listen to the students explain what it stands for:

 

Here’s a short video outlining the importance of not only reminding ourselves about not revealing our personal information, but also ensuring our friends don’t reveal our information either!

Category: 2017-2018, Blogging Reminders and Tips, Teacher Talk | 2 Comments on Y.A.P.P.Y.
October 15

How to Leave a Comment

Commenting is the part of blogging that is one of the most exciting. Commenting allows students to connect with others near and far and promotes improving literacy skills with an authentic audience, promotes and encourages internet safety, develops global connections, allows students to practice their tech skills, and so much more

In class, we will be practising reading and responding to other classroom blogs from around the world. If you’ve ever wondered how to write a comment, have a listen below to our tutorial:

Category: 2017-2018, Blogging Reminders and Tips | 1 Comment on How to Leave a Comment
October 18

Learning About Commenting

Commenting on the blog is what helps to keep the blog alive. We’ve been learning what makes a great comment and have been using Mrs. Yollis’ classmates to help us learn various ways to make a comment great.

Writing comments is about making connections, using ‘juicy’ language, engaging with others, asking good questions, writing strong sentences, and so much more.

Have a look at their helpful video below:


In a nutshell, here are the top 5 tips we should remember when leaving a comment:

Step 1: Compliment the blogger in a specific way.
Step 2: Add new factual information.
Step 3: Make a connection.
Step 4: Ask a relevant question to get a conversation going.
Step 5: Always proofread your comment before publishing.
Today, we collaborated as a class to read a recent post from Mrs. Yollis’ class and write a comment together. We hope they write us back and answer some of our questions!
Category: Blogging Reminders and Tips | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 1

Navigating the Blogosphere

It’s been 3 weeks since school began and it was time to see how well we knew our way around our class blog. Ten questions were asked that got the students clicking and navigating their way through our class blog. Links are like doors leading you to various websites, blogs, and hopefully some great learning. Some of the questions led us to visiting and exploring cool things on others’ blogs including Mr. Jessee’s blog from Thailand, Huzzah’s blog, and Ms. Cassidy’s blog.

There’s so much amazing things happening in our classroom and around the world. Blogging rocks!!

Be sure to leave a comment below and tell us what is the best thing about blogging?IMG_4695 IMG_4697 IMG_4698

Category: 2015-2016, Blogging Reminders and Tips, Teacher Talk | 4 Comments on Navigating the Blogosphere
November 12

Staying Safe Online

In class and in recent V.I.P. discussions, we’ve been learning about what it means to keep ourselves safe online and how we can protect ourselves from the sometimes not-so-nice people that exist in our world.

As much as the online world can provide a wealth of information, a place to connect with others, and so many other wonderful things, we can’t be naive to the dangers that do exist.

We’ve watched several videos together and had some important discussions around them.

“Think before you post” is one of the important messages being put forward. As well, if we receive something inappropriate we make sure we tell our parents and NOT forward it on to someone else. 

One way we talked about to say safe at home is to keep electronics out of the bedroom. Education and Child Safety experts agree that monitoring your child’s online activities is easier said than done when your child has a computer in their bedroom, with internet access.

 

Category: 2014-2015, Blogging Reminders and Tips | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 26

Being Safe and Responsible Online…Always!

When about to cross the street, our parents taught us to look both ways. When learning how to ride a bike, we were told to wear a helmet to protect our heads….so how do you be safe online?

Our discussion and learning about how to be safe online continued today.  How to be responsible when posting things on computers and other tools (ie. phones), and being safe with what we post…continued today with listening and watching some videos. After we watched each video, we had some discussion about what we saw and what it was teaching us.

What do you think about the videos? What do they teach you?

Category: 2012-2013 Posts, Blogging Reminders and Tips | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 30

Evaluating Internet Information

  The internet is such a vast resource that it is easy to understand how challening it can be to navigate through it! This is especially true if you don’t know what you’re looking at!

Today, we learned about some of the ways you can evaluate whether an internet website is valid, trustworthy or credible.

The first thing we talked about was the domain suffix. That is the part of a web address that comes at the END. For example, everyone has heard of .com or .edu

We learned that .com websites… anyone can create those and they are commercial sites with the information on the site trying to sell you something…an idea, a product, etc.  Therefore, we should be extra careful when navigating sites with the .com suffix because they may not be giving us ALL the information or we are only getting PART of the picture.

.edu means the website comes from an educational source such as a school, but not all schools choose to use .edu in their website address. NOT just anyone can get .edu as a suffix because you have to go through a very rigorous process to be approved for this. Information from these kinds of websites are generally good to use.

Click here to read more about what the different endings of addresses mean!

More tips to help you know if a website is credible:

1. Who wrote it? There should be somewhere on the site information about who was the author or who sponsored the website. What kind of credentials does this person have. Are they an expert on the topic or is this their opinion?

2.  Up to date? Is the website well-maintained so that it contains current information? If it is up to date, it should say at the bottom of the screen when it was last updated.

3.  Links–if there are many hyperlinks broken or when you click on them, they lead you to other sites that seem unrelated to the original site, this could indicate you are visiting an unreliable website.

4. URL–what does the ending or suffix of the website tell you about  who is sponsoring the site? Where is the site from?

5.  Compare–It is so important to look at other websites and compare information. If you are not sure about some information you are reading about on a website, research that a little more or Google it…see what you find out.  How does it compare with what you read?

Take a look at each of the websites linked below and evaluate them for yourself. Is it trustworthy? Why or why not?

1.  http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html

2.  http://www.thedogisland.com/

3. http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html

4. http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Category: Blogging Reminders and Tips, Teacher Talk | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 12

How to Add an Image to Your Post

Dear Bloggers,

If you’ve ever wanted to add a picture to your blog but wondered how to do this properly, here is a great video that teaches you how to do this. If you take your own photo, you don’t really need to give yourself credit. But, if you want to get a photo that someone else has posted on the web, you first need their permission. That’s really hard to do, especially if you don’t know how to reach the person.

A few great places to get free photos that people WANT and more importantly, ALLOW you to use include:

www.compfight.com and search.creativecommons.org

 

Even though you physically can copy a photo from Google, let’s say, it doesn’t mean you’re ALLOWED to. That’s why the above websites are so great.

Check out the video below that walks you through exactly how to insert a picture AND give credit to the person who took it.

Keep up the great work, bloggers!

Miss B.

Category: Blogging Reminders and Tips, Teacher Talk | 1 Comment on How to Add an Image to Your Post