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So, it’s the first week of school. I have six different classes to prepare for this year, and I’m switching from teaching Social Studies and Geography to English and
I’ve been obsessing the last couple of weeks about setting up a Weblog site for my classes, so why not get it going now? My Masters’ study has me reading an interesting book by Will Richardson- “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms”. The book is inspiring me to stop and think about the vast changes school has gone through in the last twenty years. Remember when we were in Middle School- the ‘computer lab’ had two giant boxes with black and orange text on which we used to play the ‘Oregon Trail’ game. Now, eighty percent of our students have Internet at home, and millions of kids are creating their own content online. I think it’s about time we stepped up in the schools and started teaching kids how to responsibly access the insane amount of information at their fingertips. I’ve spent the last weeks pouring over teacher-created blogspots that do amazing things linking academics with technology. I don’t think I’d be ready to start the year without giving this a try.
My plan here is to share the sites I have studied and brainstorm which type of blog will work best for my kids. Hopefully, I can get a few of my colleagues on board to work through the technology with me.
Resources:
Richardson, Will. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.
I think that it will be a challenge for all of us to begin a new school year with learning something new. I guess we see how our kids feel in the same situation. What I wonder is if you can do an interest inventory or survey(I use survey monkey---an online tool) to create questions about what types of reading and writing blogs the students might be interested in? The kids and teachers love it because it is so quick to work with. You could also start by seeing what students have blogs and using them as your "tech coordinators" as you teach the students how to access yours and create their own. They could support and assist when necessary.
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