Unleash the Power of WordPress in Your Classroom or Organization
By Bob Palmer and Glen Hill
CALL Workshop 2008
October 18, 2008
Sapporo Gakuin University
“Thousands of teachers have discovered the value of classroom blogging, both as an avenue for their communications, but also as a tool for giving voice to what their students are learning and how they are learning.” (David Warlick, The Landmark Project)
What can a teacher or manager do with WordPress? Some pretty neat stuff, including:
- Set up and manage a free homepage
- Post polls, surveys
- List course schedule and important dates
- Post assignments, links to downloadable materials
- Post photos, screen shots
- Provide links to study and training sites and other online resources
- Link to tutorials
- Embed audio, video files, widgets
- Link to podcasts, videocasts, other rich web content
- Archive all content automatically
- Provide a mini forum via comments
- Assessment: link to Quia or other online quizzing/testing site
- Import RSS feeds via Bloglines, Feevy, Pageflakes, or other aggregator to monitor and manage posts
How about students or other group members?
- Create one’s own blog
- Submit reports or assignments through posts
- Personalize and express oneself through a combination of text, color, pictures, audio/video
- Communicate and provide feedback via comments
- Keep/maintain blog long after the course ends — view example
Beyond setting up a WordPress account, what else does one need?
- Ideally, some Web space to upload and store resources, such as downloadable assignments in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF; audio/video recordings; etc.
- A news reader such as bloglines, feevy, or pageflakes if your students have their own blogs
- A basic graphics editing program such as the free Irfan View for Windows
- If you are color challenged, a color picker such as Color Wheel Expert works wonders
- A little HTML doesn’t hurt, but isn’t necessary
Online Tutorials
Loads of help is available online. Suggestions:
- Edublogs
- The WordPress website
- YouTube (just key in “WordPress”)
- Lynda.com (fee-based but excellent depth)
Recommended Reading
WordPress 2, by M. Langer and M. Jordan
Classroom Blogging, by D. Warlick
