Learning Anytime and Any Place

Empower your learners to continue learning, creating and sharing with their blog throughout the school break. If you're taking some time away from your device schedule posts for the class blog too.  

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Weekly Tips 

Access Live Links

Why copy and paste from a Google Doc to Blogger?

There are advantages to using a Google Doc to prepare text for a blog post.

Crafting or composing a text in a Google Doc creates a saved copy for both the learner and teacher.

This copy is a record of what has been written and provides access to the Version History of the document.

Viewing a document's history provides valuable information about how the learner has edited their writing and supports reflecting on and editing text.

Scaffolds can be included in the document for learners e.g. voice typing, writing prompts

Commenting in Google Docs can also be harnessed for feedback and feedforward to support the learner as they write.

If there are any internet issues when publishing in blogger a copy is saved in Google Drive.

Don't forget to Paste and Match Style. Once the text has been pasted into the Blogger post editor, use the Blogger editing tools to format text.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Weekly Tips 

Viewing Student Blog Activity in Hāpara Dashboard

Using Hāpara’s Teacher Dashboard to view learners' blog posts and monitor comments from Blogger, enables teachers, as blog administrators, to access and view all blog posts and comments in one place.

This article from Hāpara includes screenshots and brief explanations of what you are able to view, including useful features teachers can harness to support Cybersmart learning e.g.

• Published posts and drafts with dates. Display Dashboard on the big screen to draw learners attention to when they last published a post. Our goal is to share three posts a week.
• Draft posts display with a green pencil next to the last update. Remind learners that posts should be published regularly and set expectations for draft posts to be published.
• Posts without titles.  Support learners to edit posts and include a title. 
• Blog titles create a unique URL for the specific blog post. Include keywords that explain what the post is about
• Keep titles short and concise, this will be more readable for users and won’t get cut off in feeds.
• Anonymous comments highlighted in red as an alert. Sometimes parents will post as anonymous if they don’t have a Google account. 

We highlighted Monitoring Blog Comments in a previous tip. As admin of learners’ blogs teachers should be receiving email notifications when comments are posted on your learners’ blogs. If not please subscribe to blog notifications for all learners’ blogs. 

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Weekly Tips 

Viewing Student Blog Activity in Hapara Dashboard

Tohatoha - Connected Learners Share

A valued element of sharing - kanohi ki te kanohi

It was all about the impact of sharing at our Manaiakalani Kāhui Ako, Connected Learners Share Staff meeting this week. 

The purpose of this hui was for our people to:

• understand the impact of Share/Tohatoha for our learners and their wellbeing and achievement
• connect with the valued elements of sharing, in the world we live in

"It is a basic human instinct to want to share. Sharing connects us to others both emotionally and practically" (Connected Learners Share)

As a Kahui Ako we acknowledge the valued elements of sharing identified by our educators. We also know sharing positively, makes a positive difference for our young people, their wellbeing and achievement. 

Summer Learning Journey Milestone Report 

Additionally by recognising and embracing the increased options we have to share in today's world our young people are empowered to harness the digital to connect and share in ways that elevate the positive. 

Content and feedback from participants for our Connected Learners Share staff meeting:

• Keynote (Dorothy Burt)
• Breakout Session: The valued elements of sharing  
• Connected Learners Share  1:World 

Speed Dating

Google Drive and Blogger

Even if you have been blogging for a while please take a few minutes to browse through the Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu blogger tips to date.

Are you confident that both you and your learners, who have individual blogs, are familiar with these processes and recommendations?

A common problem we see on some learners' blogs is  text in a published blog post overlapping into the sidebar of the blog. 

This happens when content is copied and pasted from a Google Doc to the blog.

Support your learners to use Ctrl - Shift - V when pasting or if the post has been published clear formatting to rectify.  Recommend having a student cast to your screen and demonstrate this process for others to follow. 

Some learners may need to scroll back through their blog and check published posts. If they notice a post that needs to have the formatting cleared, I recommend clicking the small pencil at the end of their post to edit.

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu Weekly Tips 

By crafting in Google Docs first, both the learner and teacher, have a record of what has been written. Not only is the content saved but also access to view the Version History is available in Docs.

The value of this is teachers are able to view the document history plus leave feedback/feedforward to support  learners via comments in Google Docs, as they are crafting their writing.

Also if there any issues with blogger publishing content will not be lost as it is saved in Google Drive.