Bonne chance and have a great summer!

Well, we can't really do this yet but I hear the sun will be coming...Thank you for some wonderful sharing on this blog.

Last class meeting!

Hello FNED students and inspired volunteers in Providence Schools,

Please take a look at our and your blogs in the upcoming week for posting and reading your peers' stories, ideas, and comments. As a result of your tutoring work (and I'd like to think prompted by our readings, class activities and class discussions), many of you have done some serious thinking and professional growing in the past weeks and months which you are sharing with all of us. This makes for enjoyable reading and additional reflecting, both important components of being a reflective practitioner!

Post titles and School demographics/performance research

Hello FNED students,
I am excited to read some of your rich narratives about your adventures in Providence schools. A few things:
-Post 1 (late!): Please make sure to visit http://infoworks.ride.ri.gov/ and research information about your school to gather demographics (race, class subsidized lunch etc), and performance reports. Then write about what you found and how it compares with what you see/live in the classroom/school
-When writing Post 2 (late!) to 5, please select a prompt (from the list of prompts 2-7 on our syllabus), and write the prompt in the post title.
- If you have not been journaling/posting regularly on your blog, please tend to it immediately following the instructions on our syllabus so as not to fall behind and jeopardize your status in this course...
Please continue the good work!

Our course blog is almost ready!

I am very excited that most of you have created their blog and I enjoyed reading your bios. I will be linking all of your addresses very soon on this course blog. Then, you will be able to enter your blog from here (you could save our blog address in your favorites :-). The advantage is that that not only can you go into your own to journal about this amazing thing that just happened in your classroom, or this insight that you just had, but you can also spend time navigating the blogs of peers, read about their experience, and comment on them. Another advantage of visiting the blog regularly (at least once a week) is that I will be posting information, announcements every once in a while that you do not want to miss!
I look forward to reading about your tutoring/teaching adventure!

Steps on How to Set Up Your Blog

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it. (If you want to make it private so that *only* members of this class can read it, I can show you how to do so).

Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. I hope that you will discover creative educational uses for this online medium. You will see how easy it is to use blogger.com, and perhaps it will inspire you to bring blogs into your own classroom.

To start your own blog, you will go to:



www.blogger.com

The big orange button at the top right of the page will direct you to creating your own blog on a site called blogspot.com. Follow the instructions to open up a free GOOGLE account. (If you already have a google account, you can merely sign in at the top of the page.) You can use any email account you use on a regular basis — this will be your username.

Don't forget your Username and Password!! You will need them to login everytime.

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to name your blog. Please be sure to include your first name in the name of your blog and be creative so we can easily recognize your blog. This title will appear at the top of your blog. (Our class blog is called "Schooling in a Democratic Society.")

Then, you need to choose an address:

http://_______.blogspot.com

This will be the web address associated with your site. you can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you.

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later and can even find fun, creative templates at sites like PYZAM.

Once you have the account set up, you can start posting. A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish Post. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.

Your First Post:
Your first post should be a short introduction of yourself: who are you, how your semester is going so far, what do you do when you are not in class, etc. (Just a short paragraph — no big deal).

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of my first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that I can post it in the link list to the right.

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:

* Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word CUSTOMIZE, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc.
* Once you are in the CUSTOMIZE screen, you can do all kinds of things to make your blog a bit more interesting. Change your fonts and colors, edit a post, change your settings. See the tabs at the top of the screen for all kinds of options.
* Poke around online and make a list of websites related to education, diversity, social justice or anything else relevant and post them on your blog. You can add all kinds of things by ADDING A GADGET from your LAYOUT tab.
* Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... I am new at this, as well. Remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!

Bonne chance, Buena Suerte, Good luck!
Odile Mattiauda