Sixth week

What a difference a week makes.

5th Grade

One class is starting to use their blog! The teacher asked a question "What is your favorite book? Tell us a little bit about the book and why it is your favorite." A basic question. The students answered her question in the comments section, rather than writing new blog posts. This works because she can 'moderate' their posts, which means not allowing them to show until she approves them. Then she put a comment that had all the pieces she wanted up on the Interactive Whiteboard and the class talked about what is needed when they comment on a post. She is liking it! I am so happy I can't stand it.

 

I set up another blog for the special needs teacher in 5th grade. She had been using Weebly, but I think Kidblog will more suit her purposes (she thought so too). This illustrates something that I know will happen again and again. What I am trying to do is to match up the right tool with the right class or the right teacher or the right subject. This may take a few tries. The first blog I set up for her was very clunky to use on iPads, although I think it would have worked on a desktop. This new blog works better on iPads. She is enthusiastic about this so I am hopeful the new blog will work for her students.

 

2nd grade

They are still not using their blogs. But they DO use me, so I am less concerned about this. They are very welcoming in their meetings and ask me lots of questions about websites to use for their content. And they use what I give them. This makes me feel like THEY are in charge of how they use technology, and that is fine with me. They want to use technology, but they are deciding how. I will keep giving them ideas :)

 

One thing I may not have mentioned before is that two other specialists, the art teacher and the music teacher, have started blogs as a communication device for parents and teachers. The specialists have divided the blogs into grade levels and put activities and websites on the blog for each grade level. Very useful. Now I need to do that for Media...

 

Yay blogs!