blog.classroomteacher.ca

We just signed up with a $10 per month business plan with pSek to host our WordPress MU sites and so far, we’ve been impressed with their technical support.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve placed a few support tickets to help us get our WordPress site up and running. (We set the priorities in the support tickets below.) pSek responded quite quickly to even the low priority call tickets, and they’ve been able to help us get our sites up and running.

We spent a fair bit of  time crawling the internet to find answers to our WordPress MU problems. Some things might be specific to installing WP and WPMU on pSek, so we’re posting some of these items to help other pSek users. (I suppose if pSek posted some more information in their knowledgebase, it might reduce the number of call tickets that get placed. Surely, we can’t be the first people to ask these questions.)

• Support Ticket #1 (Feb 1) Medium Priority: pSek Account Installation Information
• Support Ticket #2 (Feb 2) Medium Priority: WordPress MU Database error
• Support Ticket #3 (Feb 2) Low Priority: Absolute path for mysqldump and mysql
• Support Ticket #4 (Feb 7) Low Priority: PHP Version on pSek (how to get PHP 5 on pSek)
• Support Ticket #5 (Feb Urgent Priority: Site Down
• Support Ticket #6 (Feb 14) Low Priority: Folder ownership problems / Writing Permission Denied errors with WP / WPMU
• Setting up Domain Mapping on pSek (This could have been done with a Support Ticket and a free domain mapping plugin, but in the end we paid for the premium Domain Mapping plugin from WPMU Dev)

Continue reading WordPress MU and pSek Technical Support…

There are lots of places you can set up a free classroom blog: edublogs, wordpress, and wikispaces.

Of course, “free” always comes at a price and there are always limitations with using these free services. In the end, we decided to run the (free) open-source WordPress software off of our own webhost space to unleash the full potential of WordPress in our classroom blogs.

(WordPress software is free. You can download it here, but it’s a pain to install it yourself. Check out their handy installation guide to see what we mean. You’re better off finding a webhost that offers one-click WordPress installations.) 

• Why we chose Bluehost to run our class websites (wordpress blogs)
• Why we’re (considering) leaving Bluehost
• Bluehost and CPU throttling
• Why we’re hosting our class websites (Wordpress blogs) with pSek
• Next Steps

Continue reading Classroom Blogs, Bluehost CPU Throttling and pSek Webhosting…

Hi everyone, my name is Kisu Kuroneko and I teach Grade 7/8 literacy (English, History, Geography, Drama) in Ontario, Canada.

Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with integrating a variety of different tools in the classroom, including Google Docs, online literature circles, twittering in the classroom, wikis and blogging. Here are my professional blogs to give you an idea of some of the things we have done in our classroom:

1. http://blog.classroomteacher.ca
2. http://balancedliteracy.ca

I’m interested in finding other Grade 7 and 8 students for my students to collaborate with online. I think experiencing the global village by working online with students from a different school, culture, or continent is an exciting idea. Could you imagine video conferencing with a class overseas? Reading responses from students in a different time-zone? Collaborating on a common assignment / peer editing using Google Docs or a wiki?

Here are some ideas that I’m bouncing around:

• At our school, we’re working through the challenges of having multiple classes collaborate doing literature circles in a combination of online book clubs and in-class lit circles. Please get in touch with me if you teach grade 7 or 8 English and would like to discuss the possibility of having our students do a common literature study on a common text at the same time. (Right now, one of the challenges we’re facing at our school revolves around the idea that we don’t have 7 or 8 classroom sets of the same novel, so we’re looking at the idea of using online newspapers which everyone can access.)
• Peer revising / editing – students use a wiki or Google docs to collaborate with each other on a given task. We could use a blog format to post work online and have students provide feedback in comments.
• Penpals – letter writing activities

If you’re interested in discussing possibilities of having our Grade 7/8 students interact with each other, please leave a comment below on this post.

We run several classroom blogs and professional sites, including this blog on using educational technology in the classroom. Mostly we use WordPress, but lately we’ve been experimenting with bulleting boards (phpBB) for our online literature circles.

You can only go so far with free accounts, whether they’re with Blogger, WordPress.com, Edublogs, or Wikispaces. Eventually, you want to be able to do more. That’s when we looked into setting up a self-hosted Wordpress account and looked into finding a web host.

Up until now, we’ve been quite happy with BlueHost. They use Simple Scripts to let you set up a variety of websites with the click of a button, including WordPress, phpBB, etc.

So, what changed?

• Domain Name Privacy Registration
• 1 and 1 Internet
• pSek
• Bottom Line: Who do you use for your classroom blog or websites?

Continue reading Why we’re thinking about leaving Bluehost and finding a new home for our Classroom Blogs…

We’re currently experimenting with online literature circles at our school.

Certainly literature circles, book clubs, and discussion groups aren’t new tools for many teachers. For example, the Saskatoon Public School Board has some great resources on their website about different ways to run literature circles, as well as assessment and evaluation considerations.

However, the idea of running a literature circle online may be new for some teachers. We’re setting up Educircles.com as a way to help get more teachers using bulletin board software for online literature circles.

• What do online literature circles look like?
• Other teachers who are experimenting with Online Literature Circles
• Five reasons why you should consider running online literature circles for your students.
  1. Our students were born in the digital age.
  2. Help close the gender gap by engaging boys.
  3. Provide anonymity to foster discussion.
  4. Collaborate beyond your classroom.
  5. Collaborate with other teachers.
• Things to think about when setting up your Online Literature Circles
• Current challenges we’re facing in implementing online literature circles with 8 different teachers and 11 different classes (Grade 7/8)
• How do I create an online literature circle or virtual book club?
• Challenges to getting (more) teachers to use Online Literature Circles and Virtual Book Clubs
  • How to setup your own literature circles using phpBB software
• Educircles
  • Why did we choose Educircles as a name?
  • Why did we create Educircles?
  • What’s the plan?
  • How can I create student accounts in Educircles?

Continue reading Online Literature Circles and Virtual Book Clubs (Educircles)…

If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ve already been indoctrinated into the world of Making Money Online. Just do a search using one of the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft), and you’ll see ads beside your results.

When we were growing up, we made money as teens by mowing the lawn, babysitting the neighbour’s kids, or having a paper route. As we got older, we started to get our first job: working at summer camp, a fast food joint or the local supermarket. Finally, we went to college or university to earn a degree and get a “real” job.

So it can be hard for us to understand that kids want to (and can) make money online.

Here are two things to think about:

1. Make money online as a teacher to help offset the costs of your technology-integrated classroom.

• How to Make Money Online as a Teacher

2. Explore the topic of Making money online with your students (either as a media literacy unit or as an extra-curricular club.)

• Examples of Kids who Make Money Online
• Why talk about Making Money Online in the Classroom
  • 1. The theme of Making Money Online provides an authentic learning opportunity in the classroom and can help address the gender gap.
  • 2. Talking about how people make money online provides a framework to teach media literacy
  • 3. A unit on Making Money Online allows us to apply critical thinking skills
• What would a unit on Making Money Online look like?
• Logistical things to consider with Google AdSense.
• The dangers of using Google Ads in the classroom
  • Click Fraud
  • Inappropriate content

Continue reading Make Money Online in the Classroom…

We’re just creating our new classroom website for the 2009-2010 year. We had it up and running in about 15 minutes by setting up WordPress 2.8.4 (3 minutes to create the site; 12 minutes to cut and paste the content from our Meet the Teacher newsletter.)

• How to Make a Class Website
• Should I use Google Sites or WordPress for our Classroom Website / Blog?
• Why we still use BlueHost to run our WordPress powered Classroom Blog
  • Step-by-step instructions to set up WordPress
  • Watch a video tutorial on installing WordPress
  • Download our Free eBook with step-by-step instructions to start a class blog using WordPress.
• Why we still like WordPress for our Class Website / Student Blogs
• One Big Problem with WordPress 2.8
• One Big Problem with using a self-hosted WordPress account for your Classroom Website
• Bottom Line

Continue reading Still using WordPress for our Classroom Website…

At the end of June, our Grade 8 Language Arts (English) class experimented with using Twitter in the classroom.

• What is Twitter?
• Why use Twitter in the classroom?
  • Examining Twitter in the classroom to see how social media tools are changing the way the world communicates.
  • Using Twitter in the Classroom as a collaboration tool
• Review of using Twitter in the Classroom (PMI)
  • The Good (Plus)
  • The Bad (Minus)
  • The Interesting
• Lesson Ideas
  • Background Information
  • How we used Twitter in the Classroom

Continue reading Twitter in the Classroom…

We’re trying to get a class set of laptops for student use. We use a lot of technology in our grade 7 and 8 classroom: blogging, homework websites, class wikis, audacity podcasting, twitter, dance dance revolution in the classroom and more.

Like many schools, our computer lab is chronically over-booked. In other words, the technology isn’t available when we need it.

We recently bought a MDG Flip Tablet Netbook with the dream of one day getting a class set of these “Intel-Powered Convertiable Classmate PC”s. We did a Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) chart to evaluate the MDG Flip:

1. The Good (Plus)
2. The Bad (Minus)
3. The Interesting
4. Where to Buy

Continue reading Review of MDG Flip Tablet Netbook in the Classroom…

We’re thinking about starting an entrepreneurial (Make Money Online) extra-curricular computer club at school: applying critical reading, writing and thinking skills while trying our hand at online fundraising for our school. 

We’ll probably start with making niche-websites that are monetized by contextual ads (i.e. Google Adsense). Google has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to click fraud (i.e. clicking on your own ads.) And while making money online ethically will be the corner-stone of our club, it’s hard to believe that students won’t be tempted to click on the ads on their own at home. 

So, we need a way to hide the google ads from showing up to students in our city so they can’t click on their own ads, but still show google ads to the rest of the world.

• Background information about Google Ads for Teachers
• How to put Google Ads in your WordPress blog
• How to hide your Google Ads from certain countries
• How to hide your Google Ads from certain cities or regions
  

Continue reading Hide Google Ads based on Geographic Location (Country or City)…