Bishop Blog

What do fifth graders a Huntsville’s Terry Heights Elementary, senior English classes in Mountain Brook, eigth graders at Winterboro School in Talladega County, kindergarteners at Vestavia Elementary East, and now Spanish and Library Media classes at Haleyville High School all have in common? (
Download)

They’ve all became or are quickly becoming bloggers on the World Wide Web, where they are regularly writing, sharing ideas, developing projects, and completing online assignments and homework often for the community and worldwide audiences.

Haleyville High School blogging is the result of many individuals.  Gary Warren at the beginning of the school year ask me to look into blogging, podcasting, and online activities in general to promote academics through technology for the students of HHS. I began researching the aforementioned and I was running into technical issues when Roger Satcher ask me to join a team of teachers to attend professional develop seminars through Alabama Best Practices Center, specifically 21^st Century Learning Initiative.

21^st Century Learning Initiative is a program sponsored by Alabama Best Practices Center and Microsoft partners in learning grant. After attending the first 21^st Century Learning Initiative meeting, Suzanne Burleson and I decided to start blogging as soon as possible. First, we developed our blogs and then I designed a blog for Gary Warren and Roger Satcher. I have linked their blogs on my index page if you are interested in seeing or using them.

Now we have the Haleyville Center of Technology Blog, the Haleyville High School’s Principal’s Blog, Burleson’s Blog, and Bishop Blog. Next we plan to develop blogs for all of our English classes and continue with other subjects as time allows. This first year we are all newbies and as such blogging will be a learning process for us all. Hopefully by next year we will have all of the kinks worked out and have most of the teachers blogging at Haleyville High School and possibly even some at Haleyville Elementary.

Personally, I am thankful for our wonderful school system and the great job that Gary Warren, Roger Satcher, Clint Baggett and others are doing in helping us move forward academically through technology. Our school system is blessed to have caring administrators as well as teachers.

Okay, if you are still confused I will do my best to break down this blog and wiki thing for you. A blog is a web-log or a log of information that is available on the Internet. A wiki is almost like a blog but it is a web-log that allows students to edit information rather than just post comments. The word wiki derived from Hawaii and means quick or fast and by utilizing blogs and wikis our hope is that our students at HHS will learn quickly.

Really, the only difference in blogs and wikis is that they are a lot more user friendly than your traditional website. What I mean is that blogs and wikis almost make themselves, whereas website design is much more complicated and you need expensive software and some knowledge in html in order to design a website. I already had a website (fyi: make sure you have flash if you visit my website it utilizes flash components)and although I don’t find designing websites difficult, many individuals do. So rather than spend a lot of time learning how to use Microsoft Front Page or Macromedia Dreamweaver, teachers can now set up a blog rather than a traditional website with ease. Moreover, when I build a typical website using Microsoft Front Page it takes me hours upon hours and when I use Dreamweaver it takes me even longer due to all of the cool bells and whistles it incorporates. To use an anology, website design may be compaired to college, whereas blog design may be compaired to kindergarten. No offense to any of our great kindergarten teachers across the road is implied in this analogy. My daughter had Mrs. Brown and she was great as are the others. Anyway, I will stop boring you and move on.

Anytime you utilize technology such as the Internet there are safety concerns. As with our other technologies at HHS we are very aware of the safety issues and therefore our blogs will be  moderated by the blog owner. Meaning that  comments have to be approved by the moderator. Additionally, the HHS Internet usage policy applies to all of our blogs and wikis as it does with all Intranet and Internet technology at school.

I hope you found this information useful. As always, if you have questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the “Hola Mundo” area on the Bishop Blog index page and I will try to answer them. Also, teachers and parents may find my For Teachers page interesting as it contains links with more than enough information about blogs and blogging.

Allow me to assist as I may…

William Bishop (Bill)