So what if the administrator in question is my husband; I'm still being harangued into writing this post. You see, he feels I should tell everyone how I use Blogger for my daily opening questions. I don't think it's all that special, but if I don't write about it, I won't hear the end of it. Therefore, for the sake of my marriage and in the spirit of begrudging compliance, here's how I use Blogger for my questions of the day:
(In all seriousness, I have found the scheduling feature to be very useful. I used to use a blog page on a Weebly website, and I had to "post" all my questions manually each day. This saves me a lot of "Oops; forgot to post the daily question" frantic scrambling at the beginning of class. It also saves me time if I am going to be absent, because then I know the question will post automatically. Let's just say I wish I had used this last year when I was out of the state on a school day and I was getting frantic e-mails from my sub.)
When students come into class, there is a link on our class website to that class's blog page. They then answer the question at the top with profound alacrity and perspicacity. Well, most of the time. Anyway, when they are done answering the question, they hit "Post Comment." I have all of the commenting set up so that I must approve them all first, which I find tones down the amount of silly responses you get. (Just an FYI: all of my students have Google Apps accounts through our school, so they had to sign up for Blogger when they posted their first comment. Now, they just make sure they are logged in to their Google apps account, and they are taken directly to the blog page and can post their answers freely.)
At the end of the school day I read all of the journals because they are great formative assessments that help me see what kids aren't understanding, and this helps me inform my instruction. And, unlike my old Weebly site, Blogger lists the complete comments in an easy-to-read format, so it makes reviewing them a snap. After my review, I publish the comments and unleash them onto the unsuspecting internet masses that can find them.
If you would like to see one of my pages, you can click here. I have also included some screenshots below for your viewing pleasure (click on them for a full-size image). If you have any questions or any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.
- I set up a blog page for each of my classes in Blogger. This took all of 3.457 nanoseconds, approximately. It took me so long because I lingered at the page template choice page (so many choices!). I also took a few nanoseconds to make each of my blogs unlisted on Blogger and not visible to search engines.
- On Sundays, I sit down at my home laptop and start writing my daily questions for the week. I go to my blogger dashboard, select which class's blog on which I would like to work, and then click on "New Post." I then start writing the question for Monday, because I'm incredibly linear like that.
- In the middle of writing the question, I give in to the urge to check my Facebook & Twitter feeds.
- That urge temporarily fulfilled, I finish writing the question for Monday.
- I then schedule when I would like Monday's question to post (I'm thinking on Monday). I can also schedule a time it can post. I usually choose 8:30 A.M., because it's a time that works for me. (Although Google is using Pacific time; just an FYI so you can brush up on your time zones.)
- I hit "Publish," and my question is scheduled.
- Repeat steps #1-6, only schedule your questions to come up on different days, or some poor student will get confused and answer the wrong one on the wrong day.
(In all seriousness, I have found the scheduling feature to be very useful. I used to use a blog page on a Weebly website, and I had to "post" all my questions manually each day. This saves me a lot of "Oops; forgot to post the daily question" frantic scrambling at the beginning of class. It also saves me time if I am going to be absent, because then I know the question will post automatically. Let's just say I wish I had used this last year when I was out of the state on a school day and I was getting frantic e-mails from my sub.)
When students come into class, there is a link on our class website to that class's blog page. They then answer the question at the top with profound alacrity and perspicacity. Well, most of the time. Anyway, when they are done answering the question, they hit "Post Comment." I have all of the commenting set up so that I must approve them all first, which I find tones down the amount of silly responses you get. (Just an FYI: all of my students have Google Apps accounts through our school, so they had to sign up for Blogger when they posted their first comment. Now, they just make sure they are logged in to their Google apps account, and they are taken directly to the blog page and can post their answers freely.)
At the end of the school day I read all of the journals because they are great formative assessments that help me see what kids aren't understanding, and this helps me inform my instruction. And, unlike my old Weebly site, Blogger lists the complete comments in an easy-to-read format, so it makes reviewing them a snap. After my review, I publish the comments and unleash them onto the unsuspecting internet masses that can find them.
If you would like to see one of my pages, you can click here. I have also included some screenshots below for your viewing pleasure (click on them for a full-size image). If you have any questions or any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.
This is what my lists of posts look like; you can see I have the rest of my posts for the week scheduled.
Here's where the scheduling magic happens. When you're in the post editor, click on "Schedule" to the right.
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