Time to Design! How Will Our Blog Function?

Well, here we go!  We've spent time understanding what makes a good blog and have identified the criteria we'll use to measure its success.  Now, we are ready to formulate our designs!

First step is to determine how your blogs will function.  What will be the features on your blog and where will they go?  As you answer these questions, think about a theme that may be emerging in your design.


STEP 1.  Sketch out your FUNCTIONAL design layout incorporating the minimum elements we discussed in class:

Minimum Functional Blog Requirements:

• Appropriate Blog URL, Title and Description
  What is the best possible URL, title, description to best match your blog theme?

• Navigation/Menu Bar
  Where will your menu be located on your page? What will be included in your menu?  What order will you place each menu item?
  
  
• Appropriate and Functional Gadgets/Widgets
  What widgets will be included?  Where will you place them and in what order? Remember to ask yourself what purpose will the widget serve?

• Author Bio Page
  How will you incorporate your bio/About Me information?  Will you include as part of your menu?  Design in a separate page?
• Optional: Banner
  This is an optional element.  If you include, sketch out an idea of the design.

STEP 2.  Refer back to your Investigate Reflection at the FIVE criteria you identified. Are there any other requirements you identified here that you may need to include in your functional layout?
 
• Example (discussed in class):  If one criteria you identified was the ability to search your blog, this would be an additional requirement that you need to include in your sketch.

Be sure to use the task specific rubric #1 to guide you in this design phase.

To earn a 5 – 6, make sure:

• Your sketch includes the minimum functional blog requirements.
• Your sketch incorporates the criteria that you identified in your reflection.

Remember:

• You should begin to see a theme emerging as you formulate your functional sketch.
• When sketching, be intentional about what goes onto your sketch and where they get placed.  Everything should have a reason.

An end to the Investigation!... or is it?

At this stage, we're in the process of putting the final wraps on the investigate phase and preparing to look forward toward the next phases of Design and Plan.  We would like to take a moment to reflect back on where we started and what we know now that will help propel us forward.

We began with a our unit questions that presents the problem were trying to solve: 

How can we use our blogs to share our ideas online (in a responsible and safe manner) in order to have a positive effect on our community and ourselves?

We learned about Martha Payne, who's blog Never Seconds has done just this...  she has created a place online where she shares her ideas and perspective (in a responsible and safe manner) that is having a profound effect on her, on her immediate community (the meals have gotten much better) and on our global community.  The students around the world that make up Martha's audience, are now  paying much better attention to what they eat, they're becoming a more knowledgeable community through participation in her blog and they're raising thousands of pounds to help feed impoverished children in Malawea.

Sharing ideas online: check
Responsible and Safe behavior: check
Impact on herself: check
Impact on her community and the world: double check

Our final task for the investigation phase was to reflect on the unit questions and select the criteria we felt were most important in creating a successful blog.   Finally, students were asked to use their blog as a space to publish their fist post in the form of this reflection.

Here are a few student samples of reflections that truly captured the essence of why we're blogging and what they can do to make their blog successful.

Blogging 101 by Hayley D.

Internet Fame: Here I Come! by Benen W.

Where Will We Go? by Chance B.

Talented Tiana's Blog by Tiana T.

Well That Was Awkward! by Mikaila W.


 

Drafting the Future

This post will explain what the next steps are in this process and especially point to breaking the blog into the functional vs. the aesthetic aspects of the blog.  What should our blog do?  How will it do that?  How will it allow people to interact with the content, quickly and easily?  What kind of structure needs to be in place?  How will people find what they're looking for?  How will it meet our specifications?

And So It Begins!

Everyone ready to get started with their first blog post?!?!

This is the final task of the investigation phase of this portion of the project.  On your blog, you'll be completing a reflection using the three tasks you've participated in leading up to this.

In your first blog post, you'll be typing out your reflection answers to the following group of questions that will clue us in to what you have learned so far during this project and how you intend to use your blog to answer our unit question.

• How can we use our blogs to share our ideas online (in a responsible and safe manner) in order to have a positive effect on our community and ourselves?
• How will you use what you have learned to make an excellent blog that is personalized to you and represents you and your learning at Le Jardin Academy?
• Which 5 of the class criteria (from section 1, section 2 or section 3) are most important to you? Why? 
• How do you plan on making sure that your blog meets these 5 criteria and how do you plan on testing your blog to gauge your success?

Identify Criteria	Why is this criteria important?	How will the criteria be tested?
Example:  Relevant Content	- content should be related to the overall purpose of the blog so readers can relate to the topic and able to easily engage through comments/feedback.	- review statistics on comparing number of hits vs. number of comments - create a survey that will be linked from blog OR add a "like" function to the blog post
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
etc.

To earn a 5 – 6, make sure:

• You have included a complex and detailed reflection.
• You have included many excellent details and specifics relating to your project.

Remember:

• Your reflection should include at least 4-5 paragraphs.
• Your reflection should be published on your blog.
• You reflection should include only answers, not the questions.
• Each paragraph should be written so the reader can understand the question (without including the question).
• You are writing for an audience that may not be in our class, make sure to describe things so that anyone could understand.

In class we'll discuss some of the formatting choices you'll need to make to complete this assignment including linking to the documents you've been working on, correctly labeling the post and...

An Introduction to Blogger...Narrated!

Congratulations of starting your brand new blog!  In no time we'll be posting amazing content, sharing our ideas and connecting with others from around the globe.  To get us started, we'll need some basic working knowledge of the Blogger platform.  To help you along, we've created a set of Worksheets that should clue you into the features and options that Blogger has to offer.  We've even created a set of video tutorials to better help you find the main areas of your blog that you can modify and customize to better reach your intended audience.

What Makes You Special?

Blogs allow us to share our ideas, perspectives and the things we love with the world!  Each of us is unique and our blogs should reflect what makes us who we are.  Chances are, there are others out there in the world who share your interests and would benefit from your knowledge and participation in the global conversation. Blogging helps us to grow by strengthening our collaboration and communication skills through the connections we make with others.

Your blog is an opportunity to share your take on the world, however, as we've learned in class there's certain information that's not appropriate to share online, especially in a space when anyone in the world can see it.  When posting to our blog or giving feedback on someone's comments we should remember the messages we learned from the videos we discussed in class.

Your job is to determine what information is interesting and appropriate to share with your global audience.  Before we begin blogging, we'll focus on following a set of blogging guidelines developed by our blogging partners at YIS in Yokohama, Japan.  These guidelines will ensure that we don't end up like the students in the videos linked above.

To help us generate ideas for what topics we'll be posting on, we will be creating idea maps using Google Draw.  These idea maps should be well organized and easy to understand as we'll be posting them to our blog in the near future!

To complete your brainstorm for homework:

 Continue to finish the mind map we started in class to demonstrate you thoughts on what your blog will be about.  You can include ideas on what your hobbies are, what sports and activities you participating in, what you like learning about and what you're experiencing in your classes.

Be sure to make your idea map match the rubric by drawing out clear, well-organized and detailed idea branches.  You should use a variety of formatting and grouping techniques to ensure that the map is easy to read and understand.  The more detail you provide on your ideas, the better.

Organizing your ideas in a theme related to your blogging ideas is a great idea too! 

Due Dates:

• 8-1 Connors: September 26th, N Day
• 8-2 Okumura: October 1st, R Day
• 8-3 Okumura:October 1st, R Day

To earn a 5 – 6 on the rubric, make sure:

• You have created a complex and detailed map.
• Your map is exceptionally well organized.
• Your map utilizes a variety of formatting tools to make it clear and easy to understand.

If you're looking for some inspiration, check out these amazing examples at work:

8th Grader Tiana (Here use of color and balance makes her information easy to read and understand.)
7th Grader Chris (Do you notice he's beginning to create a theme that matches his interests?)
7th Grader Claire (Her idea map is very balanced and makes a good use of color and organization.)
6th Grader Mahea (Her idea map is very complex and detailed!  She has a technique with color too!)

The Secret is Out!

Looking to make your blog successful?

Our 8th graders have worked together to investigate and research what the are some of the elements, characteristics and features of quality blogs.  We already knew that engaging writing and interesting topics are what readers come back to a blog for... but there's something about how blogs function and the way users interact with them that helps make for a more successful reading experience.

It looks like all three of our sections found some similarities between the successful blogs they reviewed.  What did they find?  See for yourself in the links posted below!

8th Grade Section 1 (Connors)
8th Grade Section 2 (Okumura)
8th Grade Section 3 (Okumura)