Ideas for Enquiry blogger

These are ideas for developing the blogging tool, based on Simon and Rebecca’s experience of the two-day workshop in Bristol this week.

These are first sketches – let us know what you think. Would these tools be valuable to you or to the learners you work with? How could they be improved?

The next few slides focus on ‘plug-ins’. Wordpress blogs have access to lots of these. In the picture on the left I’ve highlighted the ones we are currently using. Plug-ins can be added, deleted and moved around – they help users to make the blog their own, and they provide tools for both readers and writers.

We’d like individual learners to be able to personalise their blog by changing its layout, its plug-ins and the picture at the top.

We also think it would be helpful to be able to add posts or pictures from mobile devices such as phones.

Choosing

Formalising

Connecting

Mapping

Narrating

Questioning

Validating

Observing

Investigation plug-in

The eight step pathway represented as a fractal / spiral.Clicking one of the points while writing a blog post tags your post with that label.Points start off red, one click turns them orange, three (?) clicks turn them orange,five(?) to ten (?) clicks increase their size.

Bethany

Jemma

Farah

Michael

Sanjeev

Prannav Cerys

Lucy

Jacob

Teacher view of the investigation plug-in. Overview of progress. Identify areas where the individual / class is doing well / having problems

Mood plug-in

How much fun am I having with my enquiry?

Slide the slider to associate a fun level with your current blog post.The background colour shows how much fun your investigation has been overallUse the clock icon to run through the fun levels of the past few days

Bethany

Jemma

Farah

Michael

Sanjeev

Prannav Cerys

Lucy

Jacob

Teacher view of the mood plug-in. Overview of progress. Identify whether individuals / the class are enjoying themselves today / overall.

RESILIENCEResilient learners like a challenge.They are willing to ‘give it a go’.They accept that learning is sometimes hard.They are not frightened of finding things difficult. They don't mind making mistakes every so often.They can learn from their mistakes.

ELLI plug-in

The gadget displays your ELLI profile. You don’t have to make it public to the class. Click on a word to get a description of that characteristic. Click on a red circle to tag your blog post with that characteristic.

Choose an object or place that fascinates you.This is a very important step in your investigation.Choose something that you can observe in detail.Make sure it is something you find really interesting.You could include it in your blog by:•Adding some pictures•Writing a description•Videoing it

Enquiry Steps(pull-down menu)Choosing

Eight steps plug-in

Choose the title of one of the steps from the pull-down menu in order to display a brief description of what it involves and how you might represent it in your blog.

Compendium plug-in

Use this plug-in to embed your mindmap, or a section of your mindmap, in your blog.

Embedding is better than just including a picture, because it allows you to keep the links to websites and to full-size pictures and videos.

Xxxx

Enquiry Steps

This slide is intended to indicate how the plug-ins could appear alongside the blog posts.

At this stage they’re differently styled mock-ups, so ignore the messy designs.

You can tell at a glance that this student has made a good start on the investigation, that they may need to focus on resilience – and that they could be having more fun with their enquiry.