Blog 2 Learn

I would like to point you to a wiki that has been set up for our class. It contains objectives, guidelines, and traits. Read it and come back and make a comment. Do you think something like this would work for you? Can you think of any other concerns that have not be addressed? You might want to adapt it or create your very own. The nice thing about a wiki is that if something comes up that we need to add it is a very simple task.

Share your thinking at this point on the comments.

Learning how to use blogs effectively in your classrooms takes time. It is not a teaching strategy that we educators are accustomed to using in our classrooms. Have patience with yourself and your students. Think of it as the beginning of building a learning community that can be unlike any you have had in your classroom before. Allow yourself the opportunity to learn what will work best for you and your class. Start small, build, and enjoy the learning journey.

Weblogs are unique spaces that we can use with students to make writing THE focus. We can publish quickly. We can set up an audience for them. We can give them ownership of their work in ways we cannot in our solitary classrooms. Students can get to practice writing through a diverse array of writing experiences. It’s a way we can make writing a joy for them and let our students know and feel that their writing matters.

It is a great way to reassess our teaching and re-examine student learning. It is also a good way to give our students a voice. We can listen and learn from them. Blogging can foster classroom conversations that matter. Your having a blog shows your students that you make writing a priority.

Start thinking of ways to use it as a tool in the classroom to ensure that your and your students are talking, reading and writing about how and what you are learning and thinking. Interact through comments. Have others outside your classroom enter the conversations. Work at building a community of learners who respect and encourage each other.

Notice the link on the sidebar that includes A rationale for educational blogging. Please read it. Then we’ll start the conversations about things we need to consider as we begin blogging in our classrooms.

Welcome to our class blog. Blogs give us an easy way to write about what we are learning in class. We’ll start small and see where the journey leads us. We will use this blog to share our reading, writing, thinking and learning. It’s our space to tell what learning means to us. It’s our space to ask questions. It’s our space to respond. It’s our space to learn from each other and the world!

This is our opportunity to model the process for others and show how students can be responsible and make appropriate educational use of the internet. Many people think that students will not be responsible and are unable to be trusted to build these types of models. We will prove them wrong.

Let’s start off by introducing ourselves through the commenting feature of this blog! Make a brief introduction so we can all get to know each other better.  Use first names only.

Commenting is easy. Click on the word comment at the bottom of this post. There will be a little text box for you to introduce yourself. Then you click submit. Have fun!