1. 2OG BLOGS
Donal O’ Mahony, Portmarnock Community School, Ireland.

2.  north County Dublin
 co-educational
 825 students 12 – 18/19 years of age
 61 full-time teachers
 ...Junior Certificate Examination
 ...Leaving Certificate Examination

3. 10G/20G/ 30G – A JUNIOR CERTIFICATE GROUP

4. THE STUDENTS DIGITAL HISTORY...
 As 10G, they used three online applications at a
basic level
 Moodle
 Blabberize – talking photos
 Google sites
 They were all familiar with the WYSIWYG editor

5. Essential to many
digital and social media
applications
What You See Is
What You Get

6.  In their Second Year I wanted to move to an
application
 that was easy to teach,
 that had useful digital media features
 that would support the history-syllabus

7. WORDPRESS SERVED BY EDUBLOGS
 WordPress is a blogging application using the
WYSYGYG editor
 I was very familiar with it from my own blogging
 Edublogs is an Australian company that configures
WordPress for teachers
 a small fee: fifty advert-free blogs, bulk creation of blogs,
one hundred themes, extra-features e.g. creating
personalised headers.

8. THE BLOGGING PROJECT
 Taught over one period per week 12.05 –
12.40 on Thursdays
 In an ICT room with thirty functioning PC’s
 Reliable broadband
 The students generally had good internet
access at home
 I had briefed their parents by letter,
presentation and got written permissions

9.  At first a class blog – I created the posts they
responded – figuring out what a blog is!

10. THEIR OWN BLOGS
 Choose a person in history.....Within the
Junior Certificate History syllabus there are
key people in history whom students study.
 Some of these are generic e.g. the life of a
woman in Celtic Ireland, while some are
specific, for example, a named Renaissance
artist.

11.  Create a number of postings
 Respond to each others posts
 Design using the WordPress themes
 Use text Create Hyperlinks
 Use images WYSIWYG editor
 Embed video (explanation of very basic html)

12.  Good quality internet search
 Good quality content
 Responsible online behaviour
 Plagiarism
 Netiquette
 Presentation skills
 Responsibilities of ownership

13. 30 INDIVIDUAL BLOGS

14.  20G Blogs
 Anne Frank
 John Hume

15. THEIR THOUGHTS...

18. AS THEIR TEACHER
 Time
 Risk
 Constantly learning and relearning
 Transformation of practice

19. www.elearningisland.ie
www.portmarnockcommunityschool.ie