Mt. Mercy Fall 2011 discussion

Questions about blogging have come up in our discussions quite a bit. I thought I would post some of the work I've done in this area. This is my first year attempting this tool and I'm looking to improve the way it is used. Below is a link to my class website (a google site). On the site you can find links to my students blogs. Some, as you can see, are more stronger than others, but we are just beginning the process. Let me know if you have any questions/feedback. - Mike

https://sites.google.com/site/literac...

I absolutely love blogs for the classroom. Engaging my students is easy when it’s on the computer-even when they’re answering the same questions I’d usually put on a worksheet. Some of these blog responses are just to get them familiar with the process and in the habit of checking the website. Others are graded responses (where punctuation and spelling count), and it’s a faster and more earth friendly approach to teaching. I love that I can log on from anywhere and grade or respond to their thoughts without having to lug home notebooks or papers. (We have enough of those!)

I use this site as a classroom site. All of the teachers in our building have a website with the same URL. The only change is their own last name at the end. Promote this idea in your building. It’s user friendly for the students and parents! http://sites.xaviersaints.org/wagner/

I use this site the most with my Beginning Journalism students in effort to promote discussion and save paper at the same time. It also promotes the idea that as newspaper die, online news is still important.
http://sites.xaviersaints.org/wagner/...

What I’d like to do after hearing Michael last night is assign students to respond to other students’ blogs. (Great idea!)

This site is on Wordpress. www.wordpress.com is a free hosting site. You only have to pay for these if you want extra storage, a personal URL without the name wordpress included, or you desire a theme more fancy than the free options. (There are hundreds of free templates!) What I love about Wordpress is that I can use the “dashboard” which is where you add posts and pages for more than one website. I monitor my classroom website from one page and our online newspaper from this same page.

Our school newspaper site is http://sites.xaviersaints.org/xpress/
It is a work in progress. Since it is free, our space is limited which creates a limit on the number of photos we can upload. We’re working on promoting traffic to this site so that we have a reason to invest money in the site.

Another aspect worth pointing out is that you can set up your account so that all posts must be approved. This creates more work for the teacher, but it leaves me worry-free, especially in a Catholic School where a lot of items and subjects are “off limits”. You also have the power to allow comments from other people or block them, depending on how you set it up.
Happy Blogging!

I love having students comment on each others blogs. If you look under the assignments tab of my google site, you can see the rubric I use to guide that work.

I use blogger (www.blogger.com) which is also a free site (part of google). I am in the process of figuring out how to link google documents to reading blogs as a way to be a hub for technology work in reading and writing.

A colleague who moved across the state this year (and teaches 8th grade) is going to use his class as mentor writers. His students are going to 'buddy-up' with my students to provide feedback through the blog on student responses to literature and writing projects throughout the year.

@Kellie: I totally understand why you like the idea of approving comments. I don't currently have that set up, but it is an option. My kids have been doing well with respectful comments (SO FAR!).

Kellie wrote: "I absolutely love blogs for the classroom. Engaging my students is easy when it’s on the computer-even when they’re answering the same questions I’d usually put on a worksheet. Some of these blog r..."
Kellie, I'm scheduling in 30 min. of class time for you to guide class through some of these sites and have them try it out. This is important learning--I will be listening and following along and will support the learning, but we need to hear what you are doing. Good stuff!

Mike and Kellie...thank you so much for sharing information on blogging. It is something I've been interested in obtaining information on, and it's very helpful to actually see how you are both using it in your classrooms. I think blogging would be a great way to get students writing and thinking about each other's writing. I look forward to talking to you more about this topic.

When do you have time? Do you have computers in you classroom? I used to have student computers in the classroom that would have made activities like this a lot easier. Now we don't have student computers in the room so it makes it difficult to find time to give them their favorite break time (computer time) let alone time for anything else on the computer. Just wondering how you have time for these activities set up.

My students are very young to be blogging. It sounds interesting though! One thing I have done is for buddies, instead of matching the students up randomly I have my first graders write a letter detailing what they want from a readiing buddy and what books they like. Then the 5/6th graders pick a buddy based on the letters. It makes for very engaged children. Depending on your buddy assignment you might be able to do blogs to correspond with each other instead of handwritten letters. Any thoughts on that? I am wondering if we could set it up as a class blog that I enter the letters and then the 5/6th graders could respond.

Being as I am not currently in the classroom this has been an interesting topic for me. I feel that blogging can be a great thing for all students and teachers to use, however when it comes to students it must be monitored and observed. I remember in school having several teachers assigning us journals to write, not only to improve our writing skills but also to improve out ability to verbalize what we were thinking and feeling. I think it really helped me and I detested writing growing up so I am sure it helped others. I think blogging is just the newest way for student to journal and as long as it's used in a correct mannor it can be extremely helpfuly and useful.