WHY BLOG?
Our cluster journey continues to explore the realm of blogging with a session at Paengaroa this afternoon.
Why blog? What are the advantages? What are your concerns?
How does blogging cater for the diversity of the learners in our classrooms?
Our cluster journey continues to explore the realm of blogging with a session at Paengaroa this afternoon.
Why blog? What are the advantages? What are your concerns?
How does blogging cater for the diversity of the learners in our classrooms?
13 comments:
Blogging:
- celebrates thinking
- supports and reflects growth and thoughtfulness
- encourages self reflection and creativity
- invites a variety of perspectives
- widens understandings
- encourages decision making
- affirms and challenges viewpoints
- exposes our perceptions
- develops networks
- connects learners through similarities and interests
- reaches out into the community, connects with and establishes learning links
- Lorraine
We can and share celebrate new ideas, information and resources on a global scale.
Mark
thankyou lorraine for sharing your enthusiasm and ideas. I am learning a lot.
A very exciting medium for connected children. I feel it probably has enough pull to motivate chilkdren to seek technology and connectivity even though they may not have the gear at home.
Talk about personalizing.
I have a feeling you have hooked me in already Lorraine. Must be your enthusiasm. I can see it's relevance in the class- an audience waitng !!!
John
Blogging is opening up communication with myself, between each other, and the wider global community. Students are recieving blogs from other schools and family including grandparents.
They can share their interests and day to day experiences. Bloging allows them to share stories and other items of work for comment from a wider audience. They can contact me at any time.
The blogsite is user friendly and relatively safe. It allows me to set the standard for blogging. All children really love using it. It could be used for other projects including homework, debates, brainstroming, higher thinking collaboration...
Thanks Lorraine for putting us onto this wonderful resource!
I think that today's young people (digital natives) are probably writing much more than digital immigrants. Blogging and other internet communications (wikis, texting etc) probably have encouraged this. Perhaps we will see a greater level of writing by many more people than we have seen in the past. I think that challenges by other readers will encourage reflection and thinking skills to a far greater degree. For me I am so much slower and the thought of other people reading my comments always concerns me - is what I have said correctly phrased and is it worthwhile? Michele North
Thank you for sharing your comments. I too was put in touch with blogging because of the enthusiasm of others and became truly convinced when I began using it. It is risky as Michele mentions and I cringe when I take a risk, share my thoughts and see my grammatical errors initially. It is becoming easier. I soon acknowledged that learning is a journey, continually developing our thinking through affirmation and challenge is exciting, and errors are not only an essential component of learning but living!
Classblogmeister has only come to me recently and was just the thing I was searching for. Blogging for learning in a safe environment. I will always be grateful to Jody Hayes and Tom Sheehan, two passionate practitioners who shared this site with me during a workshop at Learning at School.
I love the potential for learning that blogging offers. I love the connectivity and community it provides. I love the way blogs can cater for diversity and the way it breaks down barriers.
BUT!
We can't keep filling the pot. Our days are too full now! If we add blogging into our learning environment what will it replace?
Perhaps it is time to take a stocktake. What is it that fills our classtime? I have a "crap detector".
If a task is
- authentic
- rich
- real and
- relevant
to our students, today's 21st century learners, then it is worthy of a place. If not we need to take a serious look at why we are giving it value.
Hi Lorraine,
Firstly, thanks for your continued interesting bits and pieces you share on this blog.
Some great discussion here about the benefits of blogging. I especially liked your comment about the "crap detector"... next week as a syndicate we are all bringing our timetables to the meeting and we are going to look at what we are doing "just in time" or "just in case"... I have already made some modifications, will be good to see other staff do the same.
You might be interested in two presentations I have made on this exact subject: why blog?
One is from a teacher/educators perspective and one is from the children in my class'.
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=be6ec9b852b0a542e2f3
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=601b9f31bf04019c8593
Cheers, Rachel, Nelson City Cluster
Bummer, Blogger has chopped those links... here they are as tiny urls:
http://tinyurl.com/ynlvt3
http://tinyurl.com/24hy28
Cheers, Rachel
Hi Lorraine,
You are really onto it !
I am now a principal at St Matthew's School in Marton - rural Rangitikei.
In a very exciting move we are about to start blogging using classblogmeister. I have set up the blog so that the teachers are a 'class' and the children will be a 'class'.
David has set it up for me so that the teachers publish without approval but the children are as normal.
With our setup we will see the development of the children over the years they are at St Matthews as they will continue to blog in the same blog each year. Their 'class' is in reality the school. The blog will be an integral part of the children's learning at St Matthew's.
This week I am teaching the teachers and after we have our permissions sorted out we will begin with the children.
Watch out for us !!
Hi Lorraine,
You are doing a great job spreading the 'blogging' word. I just went to a Harry hood PD day and he talked about allowing all children personal choice writing and motivation in reading and writing - blogging answers this for my class. I agree classroom teachers can't keep just 'adding stuff', blogging does take time and energy to get underway. I started with blogging as part of my usual reading wheel (reading others blogs)and then for one writing group to write each day. This made it manageable for me and not another 'activity' to squish into the day.
Wow Rachel those videos are awesome. Thanks for sharing them. Visited your class blog and loved the work you have done on Rules for Blogging. Will share these with our cluster too. Thank you
I am so glad you all pop in now and again. I will be forever grateful to Jody and Tom for sharing classblogmeister with me. I love the safety it offers to kids and the gatekeeper options for their teachers. The support and backup offered by David Wickliffe is amazing. He is so helpful. It must take hours of his time!
I have been eavesdropping on the development of your school's blog Tom, via the list serv and will have to drop by and have a look. Hope your new Principalship is rewarding.
I am still struggling with those who have not made further progress on their class blogs. They obviously do not see it as important. It is disheartening. I will post an article to see if I can get some clarification on how this could be rectified....
Catch you again soon.
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