Brajeshwar Oinam/Flickr

Teachers in the twenty-first century don’t use typewriters. We use blogs to communicate with learners, parents, other teachers and the world at large. And increasingly, we find ourselves using Moodle as our content and course management system. Comment editors on blogs usually do not offer a lot of formatting options, but they do allow a limited amount of HTML and if you want to make your comments look professional, you might need some (HTML that is).

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the “language” that browsers understand and use to render web pages so that they come out looking and working the way their designers want them too. HTML is not a true computer language like C⁺⁺ or Java, and it is actually pretty easy to learn how to use.

Why Learn HTML?

It is true that popular blogging platforms such as Blogger and WordPress have WYSIWYG editors that allow a good deal of formatting to be accomplished by simply clicking buttons. Moodle has a pretty good editing environment too, but the time will come as you get more sophisticated in using these tools, that you will need to edit at the HTML level to get things to look just the way you want. Sometimes you might borrow some text (legally of course) and it will come with all kinds of formatting that you might or might not want, and the only way to clean it up will be by editing the HTML directly.

Here are five HTML tags that I think every teacher really ought to know.

EMPHASIS

The emphasis tag <em></em> makes any enclosed text show up as italics. Use it for, well, emphasis, words in a foreign language, or the scientific names of biological species. There is actually a little more to this tag than that, but that’s good enough for now.

STRONG

The strong tag <strong></strong> makes enclosed text bold. If you click the “B” button when using an editor and then check the HTML, you will see that the <strong></strong> tag has been inserted around the text you had highlighted when you chose “B”.

SUPERSCRIPT

Sometimes editors have buttons for superscripts and subscripts, sometimes they don’t. All math and science teachers should know the   tag. I had to use it above on C⁺⁺ to raise the “++” part since this editor does not have a superscript button. Use it for exponents like in x². Hey! That one used the emphasis tag too (because x is a variable).

SUBSCRIPT

Ditto for . You’ll need that for subscripts on some math expressions or for subscripts in molecular formulas Like H₂O.

A HREF

The <a href></a> tag creates a hyperlink. When the user clicks on a hyperlink, they are whisked away to another web page or website. It is used like this:

<a href=”http://www.asd20.org/cms”>Challenger Middle School</a>

The part in quotes specifies the link target and the text between the tags is what is displayed on the web page. Kind of like this: Challenger Middle School.

Pretty easy eh? I find myself using these tags all the time. Perhaps now you’ll use them too to make your content more professional and correct.

Mitch Edds says, “I think its a good way to put ourselves ‘out there,’ to maybe talk to someone we don’t know very well and learn about how they do things. All together, I thought it was pretty cool to learn about the person I interviewed. I think it should have been a little more open-choiced though for the person we interviewed. For example, someone our own age.”

Karl Van Ness had this to say about the project, “I didn’t really like the project because I feel like I’m not very good at blogging and since I’m not good at blogging, I got a B+, which ruined my all A streak. I think the project could have been better if he (Mister McIntosh) graded a little bit less strictly because it may have been some people’s first time using a blog and he may have graded a little bit more harshly because he has frequently used a blog before. I think he could grade easier on the amount of blogging required and the quality–it may be someone’s first time and they didn’t do very well because of it.”

I personally liked the whole aspect of blogging but maybe I say this because I have used one before. I think I have to agree with Karl in the matter of Mister McIntosh’s grading. Mister McIntosh has a large amount of posts and a fair amount of experience. I think this qualifies him as a senior blogger which may mean he has higher expectations of himself which possibly, without knowing it, means he may grade a little harsher because he has higher expectations of others.

I do think he gave enough time on the interview and enough pre-warning for people to complete theirs so there is no reason for people not to finish on time. I think that this is a very smart idea for Mister McIntosh to give students a chance to experiment with blogs and blogging. Good job to Mister McIntosh!

By: Turbo Tanski

Writing is hard work and a lot of fun (witheyes)

The interview project in reading class is well underway. A lot of the blogs are looking good. Here are the requirements for the interviews:

• Interviewee cannot be a family member
• Interviewee cannot be a Challenger staff member
• Interviewee must be an adult
• Interview questions must be open-ended (no yes or no answers)
• Interviews may be conducted by phone, email or in person
• Parent or guardian must accompany you to the interview if it is done in person
• Interview will be published at your blog
• 400-800 words in length
• May be written in “question and answer” format or in “paragraph with embedded quotes” style
• You must ask at least five questions
• The questions must be approved by me before the interview

I figured it would be a good idea to write some example interviews myself so you could see the ways in can be done.

For an example of an interview written up in question and answer format see Jeff Brady, NPR Reporter.

For some examples of the embedded quote format see:

Writer and Teacher, James Van Pelt

Dwight D. Jones Leads Colorado Education

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Still Working Hard

Fantasy Writer, T. A. Barron

Some possible candidates for interviews are:

• Police officer
• government official
• business owner
• veteran
• doctor
• lawyer
• veterinarian
• athlete
• pastor
• actor
• musician
• bus driver
• the queen of England
• mail carrier

Good luck. I look forward to reading your work!

(Caren Litherland)

I think it will be beneficial if I set out some guidelines for the students to keep in mind as they write and post to their blogs. I am open to suggestions or clarifications. Here they are.

• No insults or attacks on other people
• Must use proper grammar and punctuation
• No making fun of anyone
• No threats
• Do not pretend to be insane
• No joking about hurting people
• No foul language
• No posting of copyright material (text, pictures, video, etc.) without permission from the copyright owner
• If you use pictures or other objects that are in the public domain or are used under a Creative Commons (CC) license, you must give credit to the owner of the material, and provide a link back to the original (like I did when using the CC-licensed photo from Flickr in this post)

You can post as often as you want. Some good topics for blog posts include:

• A subject you know a lot about
• Hobbies
• World events
• Sports
• Local news
• What’s going on in your neighborhood
• Pets
• Books you are reading
• Product reviews (only if you are very familiar with a particular product)
• TV shows
• Movies you have seen
• Games
• How-to do something

Those are just a few ideas.

(Kristina Barnett)

I added a blog roll of all the blogs being set up and maintained by the 2nd quarter reading students. I invite you to check them out and leave some comments for the intrepid bloggers. We are working on them everyday and each day they improve significantly.

The main purpose of this blogging project is to publish an interview with someone from the community. More on that later. For now check out these blogs (on the right side bar). They are just getting started, but some of these kids clearly have important things on their minds. Many are very interesting writers.