Start with the students

Here's what I've been doing since my last post, wow, almost a month ago, just shows how productive I've been, if I do say so myself:

• got student blogs going
• got class blog set up, and all of their blogs are linked to it
• tried out and LOVED in-class live collaborative editing using googledocs
• fixed it so that during this live editing we can all see each others' names next to our cursors (instead of "anonymous user")
• added students as googledocs contacts, in groups by course (that was how to do the above)
• set up "form emailer" - so that as soon as kids submit something to the checklist, they will receive an email listing everything they checked off/said (got that from the script gallery at gdocs, my new favourite shopping place)
• started using my gmail account finally - mainly because it's the only one my groovy new smartphone will allow me to look at for now
• geogebra - made tons of new worksheets, including ones with sliders and conditional colouring

So now I have to post in more detail about all this, in case there is anyone out there who wants to know how to, or just see how all these things look and feel. That should take.....a while. But here goes. Starting with the blogs:

Student blogs and class blog:

Before I could set this up, I had to get a big picture. Like some sort of structure of the blogs, who do I want linked to whom, how would it look, how do I start....I got really hung up on that. Then my fabulous fellow online teacher Paul told us about how he did it with his history students, and it all became crystal clear. Start with the students. Have them create their own blogs first, if they don't already have one. This is just a sort of pictorial representation of how it all looks in my wee head:

More detail to come, but feel free to comment or give feedback, either right in the voicethread, or here!