The roots take hold

Nancy Brodsky comes to a realization that blogging with her students is a dynamic thing even if the blogs don't go public. Doug Noon left a comment on her post and what he says there is what I had been thinking - the teacher as the moderator is the key. He directs us to his students' site from last year. It is a fourth grade class and it seems to be mostly freewrites. I am impressed with some of the student comments.

I think my third graders can succeed with this.

Nicknames. That's a good way to keep privacy. I was going to get them to post with their student numbers, but they will love using nicknames. One thought I had was that they could use their Spanish nicknames from Spanish class.

Doug answers some of my questions here.

I didn’t want to encourage students to publish personal journals. I didn’t expect them to want to write fiction so much, either, but that was a choice I honored. I approached the project in the context of a school assignment. I wanted them to practice good form, and to be judicious about personal disclosures. This was the topic of conversation for us in writing conferences. Because the writing was public, my students were more interested in learning about conventions of print than they are when they’re merely being graded.

I'm so excited to start. I still have to figure out my "Plan of Attack" for introducing the students to blogging and how I am going to proceed. And if only my laptop would arrive!

What is a Blog?

Will Richardson and Anne Davis list some of the things they have learned using weblogs in the classroom.

From Will:
"Teaching blogs to students takes a plan. What do you want to achieve? What can you do with a blog that you can’t do some other way? Effective use of Weblogs in the classroom comes when teachers have planned well."

What can you do with a blog that you can't do some other way? is exactly the point I brought up in one of my previous postings.

From Anne:
"I usually have a class weblog to go along with the student blogs. I start the students out as contributing/junior authors on my blog for a short period before empowering them with their own blogs. This really helps them get a sense of what it is all about."

"I’ve learned that you need to really think about what it is that you want to accomplish. It’s not a good idea to just jump out there and let the kids begin blogging. You have to really know your educational goals and keep coming back to that vision. Develop a plan that can be altered and constantly tweaked as you go."

This is what I am trying to do - figure out what I want from blogging with my class.
I like how Anne introduces it to her students by making them Junior Authors on the class weblog.

Will Richardson presented at NECC and here is something from his Weblogg-ed Presentation Links that is going to help me figure out exactly how to do my class blog. Time to go think about all of this....

Why Weblogs in the Classroom?

• Writing
• Publishing
• Audience
• Linking
• Reflecting
• Archiving

What is blogging (the verb)?

• Posting assignments. (Not blogging)
• Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
• Posting links (Not blogging)
• Links with descriptive annotation, i.e. “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description.)
• Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging.)
• Reflective, meta-cognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere.)
• Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. (Real blogging)
• Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments. (Complex blogging)

Important Rules About Blogging

The librarian at Grandview Library Blog has a great list of Important Rules.

Important Rules About Blogging

Break the Rules and You Will Not Blog!

1. Do not include your name - use your student number/class code.
2. Do not include the name or address of our school.
3. Check your post for spelling errors, grammar errors, etc. Paste your post into WORD and run spell check.
4. Do not write about anyone else in your blog without his or her permission -- No Names!
5. Use appropriate language.
6. Do not write anything that could hurt someone's feelings.
7. Never touch anyone elses blog entry.
8. NOTE: You cannot leave comments for someone else unless you are logged in. Comments should be kind.

I hope this librarian does not mind if I use these rules with my third graders this year!

Plan of Attack?

Sargent Park's Grade 8 Math Zone is the blog of a math teacher and his four math classes. He has a central hub and then a blog page for each of his classes for. His 36 students (per class) are each contributors on the blog page. They write their own blog entry on that main page.

Mighty Writers is a blog of third graders. Each third grader has his or her own blog linked to the teacher's main page. This seems like a lot of work to set up. I'm not opposed to a lot of work when it benefits the students, but this year I am implementing two new programs (Everyday Math and SRA Open Court). We didn't use these in Canada; hence the load of work.

I think this year, I just want one blog to which we all post and comment. I don't want it to be simply journaling, though. Students could do that on paper. If blogging is to be meaningful, it needs to be more than doing on the computer what could be done on paper.

Next step: Find Guiding Questions to which the students can respond. I need to find Bloom's Taxonomy so I can think up questions in which the students can probe and ponder a bit.

Question: If I use the single blog model with multiple contributors, can two students working on individual computers blog at the same time? If they can't, then I need to change models.

Finding the Time to Blog

I know I want my students to blog. I still haven't figured out the logistics. However, I have worked out a rotating schedule for the students so that they can blog in the morning. We also have a 30 minute block in the computer lab every eight days in which we could work on wikis or more on blogging.