Blogging+History

Wordpress for blogging in history
History is about sharing your understanding of events to others. Your understanding comes from the research of primary sources and resource information from the textbook. Once you have completed the research (the hard part) it is time to begin to express your understanding to others. The easiest way to author your voice is through a blog. A blog allows for a wide audience base and a platform to communicate your ideas and opinions. The site that we are going to use is http://wordpress.com/ this site allows the user to create a blog and also allow other editors which is necessary for a classroom. Each student is provided a blog and will add their teacher as a managing editor. This is a safety issue for content it gives the teacher the ability to modify postings if they are inappropriate. ***reminder this is a class blog not a personal blog, so information needs to be school appropriate!*** **Setting up an account...** It is easy to set up an account with wordpress and good news its free! Simply go to the site and click on the sign up now link. You will be directed to a page that will ask you to input all of your information and create a username and password. Fill out all of the necessary information on this page...most of it is editable later. Keep in mind that the blog address is most likely your title for your blog. Once you have completed the sign up process you will be directed to your web dashboard and you can start posting! The blog dashboard is where everything happens. This is where you can edit your posts, add pages, create new posts, modify your account settings and all other administration tools. One of the administration tools that we well look at is managing users. You will need to add your teacher as an editor, first click on the user link in the left hand column. This will pull up the add user options. You will need to add your teachers email address to send the an invitation.

Once the teacher has accepted the invitation you will need to change their status to editor using the drop down screen (Change Role to...) once you have checked their name.Once you have completed this you will need to publish your page to our class wiki (copy and past the URL address) so that all your classmates will be able to view and comment on your posts. //Any additional assistance is provided by wordpress through their help at// http://learn.wordpress.com/ **What to do with Wordpress?** Since this is a web based server students are able to create posts from any computer connected to the internet. These postings do not have to be long but should be detailed. The subject is where a wordpress blog gets interesting. The class is advanced history so anything related to that content is fair game. The postings should include at least one reference source from the textbook, primary sources, articles or related readings. Since blogs are opinions and ideas of the author the voice of the writer should be present. It is their analysis and thoughts on any given topic. Some possible topics for writing are: Really the options are endless with a choice of what to write about. The blog is about expressing your thoughts and ideas about things we cover in history. Your writing should be detailed about the topic of your choice.┬á It would be ideal if everyone was able to post at least once a week (more if you like!). To assess student work it would be best to grade with a rubric. The rubric attached is merely a guideline in evaluating a blog posting. It is to ensure that the student gets the most out of the experience and that everyone is on the same page. A blog is personal and should be evaluated as such.
 * What I found interesting this week...
 * Website that was amazing....
 * A shocking event that happened in history...
 * This does not make sense...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">An article review...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">A primary source that I found interesting...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Something that would be fun to learn more about...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">my take on a mystery in history...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Check this guy out...he did...it was cool because...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">If I could change history...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Can you imagine if (this) did not happen?
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">This was a dumb choice....
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">If I was there I would not do (that) I would do (this)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">How cool is this...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">What happened here is kinda like (this today)...
 * <span style="font-family: 'Myriad Pro',Myriad,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;">Check out this video/picture/source...