To Blog or Not to Blog...

Having discussed blogs in class today and having limited experience authoring my own blog, I have a few ideas and some opinions about blogging in and out of the school scenario.  If you are writing a blog of public interest and you feel secure enough to put your ideas out there and can do so without materials affecting you or your career in an adverse way, I highly recommend writing a public blog!  Blogging allows you to have an audience of peers who have similar interests and can add support to or challenge your beliefs or thoughts.  If you are a private person or just was to catalogue ideas or events, a private blog is a great match for you!  I know that I keep a private blog that is more like a journal for each of my kids commemorating their achievements and special moments.  It is a nice compliment to a scrapbook, but requires little prep, layout, and time.  I think student blogs are great, however I think that a lot of modeling has to take place to make them worthwhile and turn them into learning tools and not time fillers.  I recommend an assessment, most likely a rubric to evaluate student posts.  I also recommend utilizing the writing process with younger students to ensure that text-speak doesn't get applied to school work.  Writing on a student blog should be assessed with a writing rubric for conventions, focus, content, and organization as well. I think student blogs are an excellent way to do book tastings, post what is happening in your classroom through the eyes of your students, and allow students to collaborate with other students near and far.  My concerns about blogging are the lack of anonymity for students, sharing of personal information on an open site, and cyber-bullying via commentary on blogs.

Blogging

The concept of blogging is not new to me. However, I have not embraced it on a personal level.
I do not read blogs regularly, nor do I have a desire to do so at this time.
I realize that they can be quite informative and have had the personal experience of reading blogs when friends were ill and their information was being shared on carepages. It was helpful and very efficient. So, I understand how this type of media could and would be useful on a personal level.

The private vs. public debate on blogging would depend on its content for me. At this point I could listen to both sides. I tend to be a more conservative and private person so "blogging" would need to be selective blogging for me. Information based.

I have read some student blogs and have found them to be incredible and filled with information. I have read daily blogs from students on mission trips that were informative and well written. They were worthy of being read and gave the reader details and a sense of being right there with them.

I have had limited experience with blog writing with my first graders. During the past two years, we may have had a bit of a "blogging" experience. We had the students dictate sentence to us and we published them in a blog for parents to read. However, the students did not type the words themselves due to time and skillset. We also responded to "wikki" questions which I guess could be considered a blog response. Our students are seeing this type of technology being used on a very limited basis. I realize has the potential to be broadened and am looking to you all for suggestions on how to best do that with primary age students who are just learning to read, write and type.

At this point, I do not have tons of concerns about blogging. I realize my own hesitentcy with blogging and following other or reading other's blogs might be the first place to tackle.

Taking this course, listening to all of you guys and your expertise, your suggestions, and allowing myself to be more open minded, and less scared will help to broaden my technology horizons and allow me to take steps or leaps forward.
Looking forward to it all,
Reen





Professionally, I have not yet embraced this media. I am not sure if my passion is not there or if I am just not educated in this realm to know what to look for and how to get the information. But, for now, I am satisfied with email via friends and co-workers to keep me informed about daily happenings in my field of work.

Educationally, I think this type of media has a place

Blog Take Aways

There are pros and cons to private and public blogs. Private blogs provide just what they imply, safety and security for those young minds for whom we are responsible. However, public blogs provide what the private blog cannot- a tremendous audience. Blogging, in its truest form, is a way to collaborate, discuss, and relate information. In order to make the experience more authentic complete privacy cannot be.

I have used student blogs before. When I taught 6th grade I created student accounts for my language arts class on kidblog.org. I used this particular tool because it was the only one I found that was not blocked by our school. The students were so excited to put their thoughts online and have other classmates comment on their posts. Motivation was high! I also used blogspot.com as more of a CMS for my science and language arts classes. Mostly it was a warehouse for links and videos that I deemed appropriate for students to use.

Blogging with students can be spectacular! I think that students have to be taught how to blog and comment prior to getting into the online environment. Also, it is best if the blogging is as natural as possible. I realize that some students will not do anything unless they are forced and it is graded, but hopefully with the right motivation, a safe and respectful classroom environment, and quality questions, students will want to participate.

Welcome

Greetings. I wanted to welcome you all to the class!

Summer class 2011 members: Sorry, Don't have a class list yet.

Please post a daily blog reflection of your day to this site.

See Jeff for help if needed.

A little about myself: I'm a corporate faculty for Harrisburg University during the summer months. I work for Berks Intermediate Unit as a Program Administrator in the office of professional development and curriculum related to educational technology instructional integration.

Live in Lititz, PA and have 3 grown children. One working, one at PSU as a grad student and one as a Sophomore at Pitt.

The Longer Road Traveled

It's been a challenging road traveling through new Web 2.0 terrain while continuing down the ole' education turnpike. There's been technical potholes and 'traffic' jams along the way, but the destination was interesting a beneficial for the kids. When they ask "Are we there yet?" you can honestly say "Nope, this trip never ends."

The presentation is finished and the files uploaded to WikiSpaces. All we need are citations and a late night bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Almost forgot, I still need to finish the homework from the last summer class. I knew that euphoric feeling wasn't going to last long. I bid you farewell with this newly discovered picture. Enjoy :-)

Final Project Day

I'm so excited as we approach the final hour for final presentations. I can not wait to see the class presentations and hear about how the lessons went, what was learned and the pitfalls that occurred. It is hard to imagine how teachers can go back to a classroom after completing this course and NOT integrate and change the way they engage students. I keep asking myself: Why don't all students have the knowledge at graduation to compete in today's ever limited work force? Are we negligent by not teaching them with the tools available today? What needs to change? Always more questions than answers, but I continue to look and ask, what if.......

Reflections on Day #6

I realize this is a bit past Day 6, but wanted to still comment on how valuable day 6 of our class was for me.
It was nice to revisit everything we had covered in the previous 5 days. There was sooooo much. It gave me a chance to make a note of the tools and ideas I wanted to try and incorporate into my classroom and my instruction.
Learning about screencast, jing, and download helper.net was valuable, especially when putting my presentation together for our final class.
We discussed Rubistar and that was so helpful when creating my rubric for my comic strip project. I have used Rubistar several times since our last class. This is a great site. I have recommended it to several teachers in my building.
I enjoyed the time devoted to sharing our project ideas with each other. Not only was it nice to hear everyone's thoughts, but it helped to validate that my project idea was headed in the right direction. I appreciated the advice and suggestions from the group.
Jeff's overview of the project and questions to ponder was very helpful. I have found myself returning to these thoughts and questions as I create my final presentation.
I enjoyed day 6 and found it helped to piece the class together and make sense of all that we had been exposed to in the previous 5 days.