Your Blog

Blogs are a great way to communicate online, see, you are on one right now. They also give you an opportunity to share your ideas with more than just me. Its exciting to know that people are reading what you write; that people care about your ideas. I want you to use blogs for my course work. I will often ask you to complete projects and most of the time I am really open to the type of project you turn in, so if you want to complete a project using a blog, go for it. Its easy to create one, click on one of the links at the bottom of the page, think of a creative title (like Mr Plough's Travel and Tourism Blog j/k), pick out a design you like, and get going.

Keep in mind, blog entries are an extension of this school and need to be used appropriately. Please don't create a blog for my course and use it to share disruptive materials to others. If you have a blog already, please create a separate one for your online coursework.

Check out the video for more info.



Blogger.com
You may have to register a Google email if you don't already have one, that is easy too, and we will use many Google functions so its a good idea to have the email anyway. Note: you can't use your School Google Email ID to sign up. Hope to see your voice soon.

Edublogs.org - an awesome education based blogging tool

Imbee.com - a student based blog that has a lot of fun things to do



Also, if you want extra readers, click here to see how.

Facebook

WE ARE NOT USING THIS in 07

Facebook is designed for students to use a social community to meet other students at Odyssey HS. I create groups in Facebook for each course I teach. In that group I occasionally post discussion topics based on relevant things going on in the world that have to do with our class. On top of that, you can post questions that other students can help you with. This is so you can collaborate, not so you can just give each other answers. Please use academic integrity and be aware that I can monitor your posts and emails on Facebook and that I uses Turnitin.com to check and make sure you aren't sharing answers when submit assignments.
Facebook gives me a place to go and work with you guys in real time. I am online a lot and will be logged into Facebook most of the time so you can just hit me up with any questions you have. Stay tuned for specifics on registering.

The End of the Year

I've created this blog just to talk about school related issues.
There are about 5 days left in the 07 school year and Im pretty excited. Not only about getting off work for 3 months but about the possibilities for next year. We are getting a new platform at OCHS and should be a lot easier to use than Ucompass. I've used Facebook for the last few months, and think it can be beneficial for my courses, I will create groups for all of my classes next year. I will be teaching a Travel and Tourism course for both semesters next year, and its mostly project based. You will be able to do stuff like this for assignments, I mean stuff like posting blogs. Blogs are assignments Mr. Plough? Well, in my class they will be. People post experiences about travel all the time on the web, no reason we cant do it for my course.
Websites will be another thing we are doing in some of my courses next year. I will come out with How To videos on building websites the easy way so if you are interested in learning how to do that and turning in all your projects on a website, my classes will work for you. OF course, there is always the ppt or word doc projects if you dont want to do websites and blogs, those are just ideas. Speaking of ideas, let me know if you have any about ways to turn in assignments. I know you are all used to power points and word processing, poster boards, dioramas, those are typical methods of completing a project. Do you have anything progressive, exciting you want to recommend?


P.S. I will teach the above mentioned Travel class, Civil Liberties, Street Law, and American History through Film next year. Hope to see some of you there.