Putting Your School News Online - Part 4: Setting Up blogED

In Parts 1-3 of this series I outlined why blogs should replace school newsletters. In this post I’ll briefly outline how to create and setup a blog using blogED to share school news with your local (and global) community.

First: How to create a school news blog with blogED:


Next is how to manage and make design changes:


And that’s it. You can customise some appearance aspects, add a school logo header, and then write the first post as an introduction to the world. Once you've established your design I wouldn't change it too much or too often, or your readers may become disorientated, so try to get it right from the beginning.

How to write blogED posts:
The final thing is: tell your staff how to share news using blogED. Since this could be a big change they might need some training and encouragement.

NEXT: Q&A and One-click reading with RSS

Putting Your School News Online - Part 3: Benefits of blogED

blogED is a blog host developed by the NSW DEC. All NSW DEC staff can create blogs, and then post articles. The following video gives a quick overview of blogED and how it can be used by teachers and students.

There are plenty of blog hosting platforms. So which one should you use to post school news? I'd go with blogED. Why? Mainly for philosophical reasons, and because I think data liberation and data security are really important. Some key points are:

1. Ownership: Since it’s developed and sanctioned by NSW DEC all the blogED data belongs to, and resides within, the department. Readers can be absolutely sure that the blog posts are authentic. Teachers can get to it quickly with their Portal credentials. blogED probably won’t be taken-over, sold-off, or closed-down soon. And unless the NSW DEC is really desperate for funds the site should be advertisement free (both undesired and inappropriate). 
2. Content Approval: The school Principal (and delegates) can approve all posts and comments before they go public on the web. That mimics the traditional proof-reading stage for a printed newsletter, and also protects against comment spam from fake readers. 
3. Privacy and Copyright: All new content must pass through a rigorous privacy and copyright test before it can be uploaded to blogED. This reminds authors (i.e. teachers writing news items) to check the text, images, and other media they are using before they post. 

Unfortunately the biggest downfall of blogED is the technical side. Reading is fine, but creating and formatting content can be a real headache at times. Since it’s not as customisable or user-friendly as you might expect, it may be tricky to convince your news writers to move from print to blog. (I'll blog more about the downsides once this series is complete.)

But the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The technical failings might be improved over time. And the benefits (particularly ownership) can’t be found anywhere else. So blogED it is.

NEXT: Setting up blogED to publish school news

Putting Your School News Online - Part 2: Why use a blog

A blog is a perfect way to share school news with your local community (and the rest of the world). It can take on the role of the traditional school newsletter, and provides so much more.

One great example of school news as a blog is at Sandy Beach School. The screenshot image shows the 07-May-2011 post, with the article at the top, followed by a reader comment (click to enlarge). It includes hyperlinks and a photo slideshow with background music.

This highlights some really strong advantages of blogs:

1. Blogs are interactive: Traditional newsletters don’t make subscriber feedback easy. Blogs allow readers to comment. With instant feedback you get a community conversation.
2. Blogs are multimedia: They can contain any web content; text, images, audio and video, and hyperlinks to other web material. Print-format newsletters can’t do that.
3. Blogs are global, public, long-lasting, and searchable:  A blog can reach any reader, anywhere, at any time. And since it’s on the internet a parent can easily search for it via Google and get to any article with one click. No need to download a file from a particular email attachment, and then read through to find the desired item.

So the use of a blog to share school news with your local (and global) community is a really good move. But with so many options for creating a blog, which one should you choose?

NEXT: The benefits of blogED, and how to setup your school news online.

PS: Other school blog examples with reader conversations:

• Hawkesdale P12 College – a Techno College
• Throw the Starfish

Putting Your School News Online - Part 1: The Idea

Technology is fantastic for quickly sharing information with people you care about. At the moment my school shares news by sticking lots of information together as a newsletter, and then emailing it to parents. The parents have to check their emails, download the file, and ensure they have the right software so they can read it. Three steps, three clicks. Works fine, so why change it?

Because internet technologies help us to rethink how we share school news, getting your readers to it with just one click.

Rather than compiling a number of news items into a newsletter on a weekly or fortnightly basis, and sending it as a big lump to parents, each news item could be shared as a separate post on a blog.

It’s instant, it’s bite-size, there’s no file download, and it’s Google searchable.

So how can it be done?

NEXT: What is a blog? And why use blogED?

Comments

Copied from original post

Ian says:

08 Jul 2011 at 01:17 PM
An interesting idea

Audrey Nay says:

09 Jul 2011 at 11:05 AM
Tim, I have been using a blog to highlight school happenings for a while now. Our school has moved to exploring the possibility of having parents subscribe to receive the newsletter, although they can already access a digital copy from the school website page. Your idea encourages me to think differently. We could well be gaining nothing from this endeavour and may be better off creating new ways of thinking about news coming to parents. Why do we need to have a weekly news set-up? In this digital day and age we can share "news" as soon as it happens, and in blog format it is easily searchable whenever the school community wish to access the information, even a year down the track..Thanks for the chance to rethink this! :)cheers

Princess E says:

16 Jul 2011 at 11:18 PM
I love what you have done with your Bloged and it has inspired me to keep going despite some issues I am having with it. It looks professional and visually appealing. Looking forward to the post on bloged. Thanks Tim Kiaora!

1:1 Learning Unconference 2011

Over 21/22 June 2011 the 1:1 Learning Unconference was held in Sydney and promoted to help NSW teachers implement the Digital Education Revolution in their schools. Although interested when I first heard about the event, I dismissed it as too expensive for school funds to cover considering the cost of transport and accommodation. But Ross Woolfe from the Lismore Education Office offered an invite which I was happy to jump at.

An unconference is participant-driven, with pre-event surveys determining what would be presented, and by whom. I was fortunate to be able to present:

• Showcase: Video Conferencing and Moodle
• Micro Learning Session: Painting Animation with Photoshop

The conveners, Ben Jones and Pip Cleaves, demonstrated the use of digital resources during registration and preparation, providing wikispace and cloud documents, sending SMS and emails to encourage and inspire, and encouraging discussion and interaction via twitter, liveblog and flicker.

A huge benefit from this event was the chance to meet some mentors face-to-face, and discuss ideas freely and fluidly. An atmosphere of sharing encompassed the venue, and participants moved between discussions, showcases, and micro learning sessions building new concepts and relationships.

Benefits:

• Pip Cleaves (DERNSW) and others demonstrated presentation format Pecha-Kucha – 20 slides at 20 seconds each
• Paul Ganderton (Sydney Boys High School) showed benefits of using Moodle blogs to encourage students to contribute and collaborate
• Glynis Jones (UTS) described how to use reflective blog to evaluate video conference learning from student viewpoint
• Matthew Kearney (UTS) expressed interest in demonstrating video conference learning with pre-service teachers
• Ben Jones (DERNSW) discussed the use of ePortfolios for scaffolding, aggregating, and archiving project work
• Cathie Howe (Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre) led a discussion with Alice Leung (Merrylands High School) describing the use of narrative and gaming psychology to motivate students (this can be implemented into an online learning environment like Moodle)
• Alisa Williams (Braidwood Central School) showcased Edmodo as a social media for distribution and communication within the classroom

On return to Lismore (via train due to grounded flights) a pecha-kucha outlining the benefits of the unconference was presented to Ross Woolfe. This will also be presented to Kadina High staff on 18-Jul-2011.

Downloads

• 2011 Unconference Pecha-Kucha (ZIP 3.7MB) - Powerpoint including notes
• pk20.gif - animated gif for 20 second countdown

Feasibility of Web-based Data Management Systems

Should time and resources be allocated to investigate the implementation of web-based data management solutions through-out the school site/community?

Nutshell

Presently our educational institution (site) outlays annual license fees to a number of software vendors to use products such as TimeChart, RISC, and ReportCard for administrative data management. These products cannot be directly used on DER devices as application installation is prohibited on these devices.

However, alternative web-based products and services which perform similar functions may reduce annual license fees, and enable staff to access and manage teaching resources and administrative data globally from any web-enabled computer.

View entire report

• View (via Google Docs)
• Download (PDF 472kB)

Backup Regime

Originally posted on 28-Feb-2009 at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/csteachers/message/13472
Reposted here for posterity (and in the event that Yahoo! ...).

<ggeorgoulopoulos@...> wrote:

1. Can someone tell me how far back one can expect to be able to back up from in his or her particular organisation - is it more than a week?
2. Now, can someone tell me of an application that can a) back up students work, in the first case and b) backup up modified files in the second case and, c) create a separate folder/file in the destination with those files that have been modified since the last update

Howdy George et.al.,

1. At Kadina HS we keep an archive of data from end-of-year, stored on external HDD as NTbackup bkf file via Windows Server 2003. This policy has been in place since 2007.
2. Using NTBackup we use scheduled scripts to perform a full-backup of admin/staff and student data each week (over the weekend). The script wipes the external HDD and creates an encrypted (EFS) folder for archiving. Then each week-night (except Fri) a scheduled script will perform an incremental backup (around 6PM).

Each Friday the external HDD is replaced with another (rotating between three). Since we are using incremental backups; we can therefore restore any file to it's state on any day in the last three weeks. The external HDDs are stored off-site at my house (approximately 6 mins from the school). They are encrypted, so there should be no privacy issues if the HDDs are lost or stolen while off-site.

At the end of term a HDD is removed from rotation, and a 4th HDD is introduced which was removed the term before that. So it's possible to restore data from last term.

At the end of year a new HDD is purchased and introduced to the rotation, and the last HDD of the year is removed to permanent archive.

I think George's second question is mainly about using full and incremental backups. NTBackup can do this fine.

Also, for freeware at home I use Cobian Backup 9 which easily sets up scheduled full, incremental, and differential backups in zip and encrypted formats. For the difference between these try wikipedia.

BLURB: While formulating the school's backup policy we did a lot of research and talked to a lot of people. We wanted something that was simple to restore (quickly find data and retrieve), used med- to high-level encryption for privacy (not just a zip password), and easy to maintain (i.e. minimal user interactions). We considered purchasing Symantec Backup Exec but found that it's encryption was too complex to implement. We have been using the above method succesfully, able to meet several requests to restore specific data to a specific date. Of course, all of this may be defunct once the DET introduces eBackPacks for students (and staff?).

Cheers,
Tim Simaile IPT/SDD
Kadina High School NSW

EDIT: At the beginning of 2011 we implemented Windows Server 2008, but I've found their native backup system confusing, and retrieval difficult. So I've resorted back to the latest Cobian. If you use, and you like, please donate and support open-source sofwtare developers.