Simply, I need to start posting. In order to become a blogger, I must blog. I have been watching from the stands rather than getting on the playing surface. So here goes:
I am an administrator so I don’t get to be in the classroom as much as I would like to. Fortunately, I have found a way get myself into the grade 6/7 class once a week for an afternoon. I am using this class to learn about how ten and eleven year olds use technology to make their lives better.afternoon. I am using this class to learn about how ten and eleven year olds use technology to make their lives better.
Interestingly, I am not seeing the tendencies of digital natives that Marc Prensky writes about. In fact, what I am faced with is students with relative apprehension towards blogging.
I have provided these students access to two private (which means that I cannot link to them from here) blogs. I am using Blogger.
One of the blogs is a student scribe of their math classes. The genesis of this assignment came from Darren Kuropatwa’s blog motivational tool…his scribe post hall of fame
The other blog is a private blog that only each student and I are the authors and readers. The assignment is to choose a topic for which they have passion. They need to express what they already know about the topic. Then they need to give a direction of what they want to learn more about. I have asked them to try to be specific here. Finally, they need to discuss how they are going to provide evidence of their learning. The purpose of this assignment is to get the students to blog. I will then help them understand how to blog effectively. I am using Bloglines to manage the student posts. It makes it easier to know when new posts have been created. In addition, having all the new posts in one place makes it easier to copy paste comments that are relevant to more than one student at a time.
In all honesty, I intend to learn alongside my students. As I am new to blogging, I hope to embark on this adventure with my students. Let the fun begin.
