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By audhill | August 7, 2007
Vicki Davis lists her de.li.ci.ous tags every day or so. This morning (3:30 am) she has linked to a woman who is going to Cambodia to teach people to blog. It has me thinking about blogging in my classroom this year and how I want to do it differently from last year.
Last year, my tech director allowed me to create the first blog in my district. She had, up until this point, been pretty much against blogs of any kind. I convinced her to give it a shot in the fall and we kept a blog in one class only which wasn’t a blog so much as a on online homework page ON a blog. I’d give an assignment and students would post their responses in the comments section. The blog had a password so that I couldn’t show it to people and students weren’t supposed to use their names. I had permission to do it with one class. Now that the course is over, and the email addresses are stripped out of the blog, I can link it here.
This fall, I have permission to extend my blogs. Every class will participate. Either I’ll have 120 blogs, plus the 5 person team blogs or I’ll just have the team blogs. They will all be password protected and unavailable to outside the district. Since I think I’m the only teacher blogging in our district currently, I can’t share blogging with other classes than my own. But that’s okay for now.
Here’s the difference between the individual blogs and the team blogs (so far as I’ve conceived it). The individual blogs can be experimental … including drafts, self reflection…. pretty much an online journal. For these blogs, there will be fewer requirements: no length requirements, spell checks, etc. There will be some prompts, I guess. Some that will be required of all … maybe once a week a prompt and then students come up with their own ideas. For the most part they just use them as they will (although all entries will be moderated– that was the understanding I have with my district supervisor and I’m fine with that)
But, then they will also have responsibility to a five person blog that will post one entry a day (each student gets a different day). These blogs will be journalistic and will require research, more attention to writing conventions, etc. they’ll brand the blog, market to their own age group, come up with strategies to build readership. And every student will be taught how to use RSS feeds so that they can update their blogs and know that there is at least potential readership. I thought then that students should have a comment requirement. They can comment on any blogs they like (these also are moderated) with a minimum number of comments.
It has occurred to me that I should keep a blog as well. Not this blog, obviously… but one that is for my students to view.
I guess my questions are these:
1) should they be expected to write in their own blogs every day?
2) Is there really a reason to give them personal blogs if there are no expectations for them?
3) Is a comment expectation a good idea?
4) What criteria should I use for grading and participation?
I haven’t bought David Warlick’s book on blogging in the classroom. I guess I’ll have to do that (I hope it will be useful) And maybe I should get a book on professional blogging for information about branding, best practices, etc. I want my students to see their blogs as forums for serious efforts, not just places where they have none of those adult restrictions (attention to craft) and they can get credit for talking in acronyms. I’m not much interested in the communication with the world stuff as much as I am in the journalistic, non fiction feature writing and publishing aspect. Maybe later (if my tech director goes for open blogs no email addresses or names) I’ll be all up about talking to kids across the world, right now I just want to use them to serve teaching good writing and thinking skills and for them to be able to read and interact with each other. That will be quite enough for now. ( I need to go back to sleep… it’s 4:19 am.)
Topics: edtech |