I can't believe the semester is drawing to a close and it's time to write my final course reflections!
I have really enjoyed this course immensely. I've had so much fun exploring each of these new technologies and implementing them in various ways. In particular, I've really appreciated the time spent honing my blogging skills. It has been incredibly helpful to kind of be forced to update my blog and comment on my classmates' blogs regularly. It can be tough to make the time to focus on community engagement, but it really is such a wonderful and important part of blogging. I've also found myself focusing more on things like incorporating videos, pictures and links into my posts. I've started making more deliberate choices in labels. I've worked to develop a clear voice. I think my blogging has improved because of this course.
Another part of this course that I particularly appreciated was learning how to create digital stories. I had such a great time creating my digital story and learning how to use imovie. (I'm now more desperate than ever for a MacBook Pro!) This is something that I would have been intimidated to try in the past. I amazed myself with the level of enthusiasm that I had for this project. I happily spent hours reworking my digital story until I was completely happy with it. I'm already planning a few more projects that I'd like to make with imovie. I can't wait to keep exploring with this tool.
I managed to accept the loss of Google Reader, and even happily embraced a new reader, and taught our class a little about using Feedly.
I created and implemented a literacy project - with students in Ohio!
We've covered a lot of technologies in this course, and I have enjoyed them all.
In addition, this course has really made me take stock of just how much passion I have for blogging and social media. I have been blogging personally for several years now, but it's something I have always regarded as a hobby. The first page of my iphone is filled with various blogging and social media applications. I check Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest a hundred several times per day. I follow dozens of blogs which I read regularly. I'm a member of several different message boards. I write a book review blog, and I'm toying with starting a Disney fan blog or a personal blog (or both!). I spend a huge amount of my free time glued to my computer. I am always looking for the new great thing out there on the internet, but for some reason I have never really thought in terms of making my love of these various technologies anything more than a hobby.
This course has allowed me to spend a great deal of time further exploring these technologies. It has made me realize that I would like to make a career in blogging and social media. I have recently begun applying for jobs in this field and I couldn't be happier about it. I am looking forward to putting the skills that I have honed in this course to good use both personally and professionally!
For my second web 2.0 tool, I decided to experiment with Voki. It seems to be a tool that a lot of my classmates have experimented with, so I thought it was time that I try it out for myself.
I spent a little time figuring out the site, and then I threw together this sample Voki:
All in all, I thought Voki was pretty easy to use. Students would probably have fun experimenting with creating different characters and choosing from the various voices. I did like that while you have the option to record your own voice, you can also choose from various "type to text" options. I think that provides a great option for students who may be shy about recording their voices.
If you're in a classroom, have you tried Voki with your students? What did they think of it?
As soon as I read Diana's post about Popplet, I knew that Popplet was something I was going to love. I immediately decided to explore this tool as one of my web 2.0 experiments.
Popplet is essentially a customizable tool for creating graphic organizers. You can make up to five different Popplets with a free account, and then if you want to create more there are a couple different pricing tiers available. It's pretty inexpensive - you can get unlimited Popplets for $30/year.
How can I put this? I'm so immediately obsessed with this tool that I don't even have a classroom and yet I find myself contemplating the yearly subscription!
This is a great tool for anyone who gets just a little too excited about orgizational tools.
If the books on your shelves are sorted first by genre and then alphabetical order...
If you obsessively collect baskets and containers to sort things into...
If there is a drawer in your desk that is dedicated only to various types and sizes of notebooks...
...then you need Popplet, immediately. (Or possibly some type of intervention.)
This tool is fun and easy to use, it's free (well, it can be) and it's easy to share your completed project in a variety of ways. I enjoyed playing with it and I'm betting lots of students would too.
I also really like that you can import pictures into the boxes! That really opens up a ton of possibilities for implementing this tool in meaningful ways.
I made a simple Popplet organizing the major sub-genres of Young Adult literature (of course I did!) and I easily made this in maybe 30 minutes (at least ten of which was spent deciding which colors to assign to which genre and rearranging the boxes in exactly the right visual arrangement).
Feel free to explore my Popplet! And if you haven't tried this tool yet, I highly recommend it.
For my literacy project, I worked with Mr. Boylen's 7th and 8th grade students. You may remember that we have commented on his students' KidBlogs in the past. If you have a few moments, his students are always happy to have teachers stop by and comment on their blog posts! You can view their KidBlogs here and here.
Mr. Boylen was kind enough to ask his students to view the digital story that I created about Young Adult literature:
Then, he asked the students to complete the Google Forms survery that I created for them based on my digital story, which you can view here.
The basic idea was to show the students the video as sort of a brief introduction to Young Adult literature, and then
Overall, I really enjoyed using Google Forms for this project. The survey was simple to create, and one of the design templates had a book theme, which was perfect. I posted the form in a blog post, and it was easy for the students to reply to it there. The process was very smooth and it was great to be able to use this technology to give a survey to students in another state!
The only thing that I found somewhat frustrating is that it ended up being difficult for me to create visual representations of the data that I chose to collect. I was looking forward to creating charts and graphs of the data I collected, but most of the questions I asked had open-ended responses, which in most cases really did not lend themselves well to charts and graphs. In hindsight, perhaps I should have included a few more questions with a given set of responses to choose from. On the other hand, the open-ended questions yielded some really fantastic responses from the students, who gave very thoughtful responses. I really appreciate the obvious effort that the students put into this!
Below, I have shared some of the data that I collected, from 60 7th and 8th grade students:
This pie chart represents the students' responses to the question that
asked them to choose their favorite type of Young Adult literature.
Since I used so many open-ended responses, pasting all of the replies here would make for an overwhelming post! Instead, I have chosen select parts of the survey to share here. I did choose to include every response to the question, "What is your favorite Young Adult book", however. So many of my classmates are currently classroom teachers, I thought this particular information might be helpful for them to have!
Do you enjoy reading Yound Adult literature?
54 students said some variation of yes
4 students said maybe or it depends
2 students said no
What is your favorite Young Adult book?
The Rebounder
Identity Theft
Perfect
The Hunger Games (12)
Wrestling Sturbridge
Falling In
Trapped
I Heart You, You Haunt Me (2)
Caddy Ever After
Runaway
Stolen
Fever
Double Identity
Cradle and All
The Lying Game
Eat, Pray, Love
Eragon
Life as We Knew It
Squashed
Invisible
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Into No Man's Land
Freaky Green Eyes
Chicken Stripes
Friday Night Lights
Elsewhere
Twilight (2)
Safe Haven
Before I Fall
Wild Life (2)
Flawless
The Fault in Our Stars
This is Not a Test
Peak
Campfire Weenies
The Hobbit
(Undecided) (2)
Comfort
Jane Yolen
Summer Ball (2)
Thirteen Reasons Why
Soldier Boys
Slam
Boot Camp
The Running Dream
The Hardy Boys
Snitch
The Host
Lord of the Kill
Harry Potter
What are two books you read recently and enjoyed? What did you like about them? Room & Firefly Lane: "written from an interesting perspective and led me to think about situations in a different light" White Fang & Wild Life: "involved the outdoors and made you want to keep reading them" Among the Imposters & Slob: "something new happens in every chapter" Reached & Crossed: "based on the future of what America could become" Harry Potter & The Hunger Games: "action, fast-paced" Devil's Arithmetic & The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: "something exciting or thrilling on almost every page" Double Identity & Troy High: "very interesting...realistic" Air Raid Pearl Harbor & Baseball Great: "felt like I was in the book" The Hunger Games & The Lost Hero: "very addictive... once I read it I couldn't stop" Eldest & Firestar: "dragons" Into No Man's Land & Never Stop Pushing: "influential, inspiring and historical" The Diary of Anne Frank & Perfect: "talked about real people and their lives and things that can go wrong" The Hunger Games & The Bomb: "keeps you on your toes... when you think things will slow down they speed up" Radiance & Freaky Green Eyes: unpredictable... relate to many decisions in your life" The Devil's Arithmetic & Backfield Package: "full of suspense" Sarah's Key & Lush: "like you are there watching"
What makes a Young Adult book great?
"shows real life problems and stories"
"about kids our age most of the time and situations we could be in"
"stories you can relate to"
"a fast-paced plot, interesting characters and surprise twists"
"love, or drama"
"make you feel like something of the sort could actually happen to you"
"lots of action"
"adventure"
"keep you guessing until the end" *An overwhelming majority of the students surveyed mentioned here that they like books about characters and situations they can relate to.
If anyone is interested in viewing the full results of my survey, just leave me a comment here and I would be happy to share the Google Form.
I hope you all found the results of this survey as interesting as I did! I think it's very significant that out of 60 students surveyed, only 2 students reported disliking Young Adult literature. Clearly, if we want to get students interested in reading we have an enormous genre to explore.
Once again, I would like to say thank you to Mr. Boylen for asking his students to participate in this project for me. Thank you also to all of the students who took the time to respond! I greatly appreciate your feedback.
I really enjoyed experimenting with Google Sites and creating my own site. I was pleasantly surprised by how intuitive this process was.
I'm not a classroom teacher, so in approaching what kind of site to make I just chose a topic that interests me and ran with it.
I created a site that is meant to serve as a brief introduction to the world of Young Adult literature. It's obviously not finished, because the purpose of this exercise was simply to experiment with creating a website using Google Sites... but if you'd like to check it out, you can click here.
I basically created a home page, on which I would include a brief definition of Young Adult literature, and some basic information like:
a list of book blogs that review Young Adult literature
information about GoodReads, a site that lets users log the books they have read or want to read
twitter accounts which discuss Young Adult literature
Then I created sub-pages, one for each sub-genre of Young Adult literature. I included on each page a few examples of books that fall into that sub-genre. I imported pictures of some of my own books for each category to make the site more visually appealing.
What was your experience with this project like? I thought Google Sites was pretty easy to navigate, and I was impressed with how much flexibility a free service offered. This is definitely something I could see myself using in the future!
Now that we've all had some time to process the fact that our beloved Google Reader will soon be closing its doors forever, I thought I'd put together a post that introduces bloggers to one of the alternative aggregate readers: Feedly.
In my opinion, Feedly is the best replacement available for Google Reader. Everyone should use the aggregate reader that best fits their own personal needs, and fortunately there are plenty of options out there if Feedly doesn't seem to be the best fit for you. But let's go over some of the features that Feedly offers, so that you can learn a little about Feedly and begin to decide if it might work for you.
To get started learning about Feedly, you can visit their site directly via the link above. There is a wealth of information available on the Feedly blog. You can also follow Feedly on Twitter.
Now, let's talk about some of the things I love about Feedly.
Perhaps the single most compelling reason to make the switch from Google Reader to Feedly? You can import all of the blogs you already follow into Feedly - and it's beyond easy to do.
After you install Feedly, when you open it the first time it will give you the option to connect to Google Reader. Click on "Login" and log into your Google account. Next, Feedly will ask you to allow access to your data in Google Reader. If you select "allow access", Feedly will immediately transfer all of your subscriptions from Google Reader into Feedly. It will also keep all of your subscriptions sorted into their existing categories!
Another compelling feature of Feedly is the (free!) mobile application which syncs across your computer, phone and tablet.
Below are some screenshots from my Feedly app. Notice that the app cleanly displays your blog categories, with easy click through to first a specific category and then a particular blog.
The Type A personality in me loves how clean and organized this is.
The app is simple and fun to use, with minimal tapping and swiping to navigate to the areas you need. It's inherently intuitive: open it up and spend just a few minutes playing with it and you'll quickly learn a lot. When you start using the app, it will give you simple instructions and shortcuts like this:
Let's talk about some of the simple things you can do within the Feedly application. You can easily "share" content via Faceboook, Twitter, Google+, or email by clicking on the arrow seen at the top right of the following picture:
After you click on the arrow, various social media icons will appear, as seen below. Simply click on the icon for the media platform with which you mean to share the content.
When viewing a particular post, you may wish to bookmark it to return to later. Click the bookmark icon at the top right (shown below in green) and Feedly will mark the post as saved and add it to your saved posts. Bookmarked in error? Simply click the bookmark again, and Feedly will remove the bookmark.
You can search for new blogs to follow, by browsing one of the following categories or simply entering a key word or phrase into the search bar. I've found great new book review blogs to follow by entering terms like "book review", "book blogger", and "Young Adult books" into the search bar. Play around with it! Enter some of your interests and hobbies and see what comes up. You may stumble upon something really great.
Sometimes after a time you will find that you are no longer interested in following certain blogs. If you decide you want to stop following a particular blog, you can go into "Settings" (located at the bottom of your list of categories) and easily delete feeds to stop following them. First, go into Settings. Tap "Edit Content", and you will see "Remove" and "Cancel" buttons pop up under your list of categories. From here, you can click on a particular category and see all of the content listed under that category (as seen in the third picture). Check the box for the feed(s) you want to stop following, and click "remove".
Looking to change something besides which content you follow? Go to "Settings", and then "Advanced Settings". From here you can easily customize the look and feel of your Feedly application.
Overall I personally find Feedly to be a great substitute for Google Reader. In fact, once I moved past my initial disappointment over losing my tried and true Google Reader, I discovered that in many ways I actually prefer Feedly. It has a clean, modern look that I think many people with an interest in blogging and social media will appreciate. It is incredibly easy to navigate, and has plenty of options for customization. I love that the computer, app and tablet versions all sync so that no matter which device I am using, my content is there. All in all I would consider my transition from Google Reader to Feedly to be complete at this point, and I'm very happy with the change.
Dying to know even more about Feedly? The following posts contain
great information surrounding Feedly's various features:
After many, many hours spent fruitlessly struggling to make a video on PhotoStory3 only to hit a brick wall and ultimately have to scrap my efforts and try a new program...
And many, many more hours spent learning how to use imovie and then creating this video entirely on my iphone....
AT LONG LAST my rough draft is finally ready to go!
Special thanks to my husband, who is such a good sport that he graciously agreed to narrate this for me, since I've been sick for the past few weeks and I couldn't stop coughing long enough to record my narration!
I welcome any feedback.
Especially the kind that goes, "it's perfect as is, I wouldn't change a thing". ;)
I would share this with high school students at the beginning of the year, to show them that the kinds of books that they enjoy are also enjoyed by adults. I would also hope that it might spark the start of a class conversation about books that they particularly enjoyed.
Did you use PhotoStory3 or imovie? What did you think of the program you chose?
I spent a lot of time today leaving comments on blogs, both classmates' blogs for this course and blogs that I personally follow. Blogging is something I personally love to do, and I make an effort to leave frequent comments for the blogs I follow, because I know that getting a notification that you've received a comment feels a little like finding $20 you completely forgot about in the pocket of your jeans.
Best! Feeling!
In contrast, this is how I felt, many many MANY times, immediately after typing out a thoughtful comment and hitting "submit":
Word (or comment) verification is one of the most frustrating things I deal with when blogging. I feel a little burst of joy every time I hit submit and see those glorious words "your comment has been submitted", instead of seeing that dreaded comment verification box.
This is an optional feature, and it is one that I choose not to use on my blogs, because I firmly believe that it costs bloggers comments. (Also because having to constantly "prove I'm not a robot" makes me feel stabby, and I prefer not to make my readers feel that way!) I personally look at it like this: I blog, in part, because I welcome interaction with my readers. I love getting comments, and I appreciate when people take the time to leave them. The last thing I would ever want to do is make my readers feel like they have to jump through hoops just for the privilege of leaving me a comment.
In a perfect world, this is what a comment verification box should look like:
When I see this kind of thing, I sigh quietly, but I jump dutifully through the required hoop and leave my comment. It's annoying, I'm slightly peeved, but I move on with my life.
However.
I cannot tell you how infrequently I encounter that comment verification box. That box is like a tall glass of ice cold lemonade at the end of a twenty mile hike through the desert compared to what I typically run afoul of.
Invariably, when I click "submit" on a blog that has comment verification enabled, what pops up looks a lot more like this:
This isn't outside the realm of possibility either:
And when I see comment verification boxes like these, this is how I feel:
I totally understand why people blogging for this course would leave comment verification enabled, and I hope everyone takes this in the tongue-in-cheek spirit that it was intended. I just wanted to throw it out there for anyone who has, through this course, discovered a love of blogging that they want to pursue beyond the course. If this is you...
...Save a blogger. Turn off comment verification. At least consider it. Your readers will weep with joy thank you.
On the suggestion of my Integrating Technology professor, this week I visited high school English Starr Sackstein's blog, specifically the post 12 Tips for Using Twitter in the Classroom. I was immediately interested in the post because Ms. Sackstein works in a high school English classroom, and English is my area of interest. I also happen to be a pretty big fan of Twitter, so I was thrilled to see two of my passions combined in one post!
I really like the way that Ms. Sackstein describes Twitter as "micro-blogging" - what an apt description! What Ms. Sackstein has done is essentially embraced her students' natural enthusiasm for Twitter, and found a way to harness that enthusiasm and put it to use in her classroom. Each week, she directs students to an article online and then asks that they participate in a chat about the article on Twitter, posting their own comments and also replying to their classmates' comments.
In this way, this teacher has engaged her students and put them in charge of their own learning. She has identified something that her students have a natural passion for, and found a way to integrate that into her curriculum. She simultaneously teaches students the content area knowledge that she needs to cover and increases their literacy by teaching them about the basics of interacting via Twitter.
I love the idea of taking class discussions to Twitter, because I can really see how that would spark students' interest in participating in the discussion.
Have you ever used Twitter in your classroom? Would you consider using it in this way?
I spent some time over the last two weeks learning how to use Animoto, and I was happy to discover that it is every bit as intuitive as it appears. I was able to teach myself how to use it very quickly, and it was easy to create a simple video. I would feel confident asking students in middle school or high school to create their own videos using Animoto.
The most challenging aspect of the whole endeavor was finding "free to use and share" pictures to include in the slideshow. Prior to our class discussion last week, I never knew that I could filter Google Image results by the image's licensing requirements. I did that when searching for images to use in this Animoto. It definitely limited my results, but it was nice to know that I wasn't stealing someone's images!
I also felt that the available music was fairly limited - although one of the options happened to work well for my video, in the future I see myself uploading music from my own personal library to use.
Depending on the topics of my future Animotos, I might consider incorporating some images of my own, even if it meant going out and taking pictures specifically for that purpose.
Here is the Animoto that I created, which is meant to be a simple introduction to the book The Hunger Games.
Have you ever used Animoto before? Have you asked students to use it? How did that work out?
Diigo is a social bookmarking site similar to Pinterest. Its purpose is essentially to store things you might want to go back to in the future. It is a cleaner, more efficient way of "bookmarking" various sites so that when you want to find something later, you don't encounter an endless sea of text.
So far, I have mixed feelings about Diigo. One the one hand, I absolutely love the ability to highlight certain parts of a page, or to place a sticky note somewhere. It's nice to be able to add titles, labels and descriptions.
However, I tend to prefer the visual aspect of Pinterest. I know that some people feel that it's easy to lose track of pins. I find that I avoid this by creating many very specific boards rather than just a few general ones. Instead of "recipes" I might have "breakfasts", "appetizers", and "desserts", for example. This makes it much easier to go back and find things that I have pinned. My only complaint with Pinterest is that I sometimes struggle to choose which board to pin something to. A certain cake recipe might seem to fall under both "desserts" and "party ideas", but I dislike cluttering up my boards by pinning one pin in multiple places. In this area, the labels feature of Diigo is a big help.
I do think it is possible that I might still be on a bit of a learning curve with Diigo. I will definitely keep using Diigo, and see if my opinion changes over time.
One tool that I rely quite heavily on as a blogger is Google Reader. Google Reader is essentially an online mailbox that keeps all of the blogs you read in one central location. After adding the blogs you want to follow, you can sort them into categories to make it easier to quickly find the one you want to read.
For example, in my Google Reader the blogs that I follow are sorted into the following categories: Authors, Book Blogs, Cooking Blogs, EDUC 584, Favorite Bloggers, Gym Inspiration, and Friends & Family. Each time I log into my Google Reader, I can quickly find the blog that I am in the mood to read at that particular moment. Google Reader has a nice mobile version if you happen to have a smart phone - I often catch up on my blog reading when I have some time to kill waiting in line at the store, or if I arrive early meeting a friend for dinner. I will even log in on my phone while at the gym if I need a distraction from my workout!
The only "danger" in reading blogs via Google Reader - especially if doing so on your phone - is that it can be easy to forget to actually click through to the blog and leave a comment. In my opinion, leaving meaningful comments on posts and involving yourself in the online community is a crucial part of blogging. Reading posts is worthwhile in and of itself, and I certainly don't feel obligated to comment on every post that I read - far from it. However, I do think that the back-and-forth that comes in the comments section of a blog post is a really valuable part of the blogging experience.
One thing I learned while reading Richardson's chapter on RSS is that within Google Reader, you can enter search terms to help you find blogs of particular interest to you. Although I have used Google Reader for years now to organize the blogs I read, somehow I never knew about this particular feature. After I read Richardson's chapter on RSS, I immediately tested this feature out and promptly discovered a new book review blog to follow! I will definitely be experimenting further with this feature in the future.
From a classroom perspective, this feature could be extremely valuable to students searching for blogs that match up with their interests. I would introduce Google Reader and its various features to my students as part of an introduction to blogging.
In short, Google Reader is the perfect tool for anyone who reads more than a handful of blogs on a regular basis, and it is the only reason I am consistently up to date with all of the blogs that I follow (a lot!).
Do you use Google Reader (or something similar)? How do you think you might advise students to use it, if at all?
One of our assignments for class this week was to read the article "Online Collaborative Inquiry: Classroom Blogging Ventures and Multiple Literacies". I found this article interesting in a number of ways.
One statement in particular that really stood out to me was that the technologies themselves are less important than how we as teachers integrate them into the classroom. It is not enough, in other words, simply to instruct students in the basics of Twitter, facebook, or Animoto. Rather, we need to find meaningful ways to truly integrate these technologies into our existing curriculum. Students need to learn which technology to use in certain contexts, and how best to use it. In this way, they begin to develop advanced literary skills. The National Education Technology Standards for Students (NETS) has specific guidelines regarding how students should understand and be prepared to utilize these various technologies. The argument can be made that blogging in particular satisfies most of these skill sets, but it is important to remember that students ought to be well rounded when it comes to various technologies.
I also liked that the article made mention of the value of the blogging community. Blogging inherently encourages a back-and-forth discussion that can be invaluable in a school setting. Students will be able to share their work and expand their knowledge base by connecting online with other writers, and we as teachers will have successfully integrated blogging into our classroom.
This week I have spent some time exploring the Animoto website and thinking about how I might integrate this technology into my future classroom. I like that this technology seems to be very intuitive and not at all intimidating - I can see high school students easily learning how to make videos.
I spent some time viewing the Animotos listed on our class page, but I am planning to teach high school English, and most of these samples seemed to be aimed at elementary school children, so I decided to branch out on my own via Google. I am a huge fan of young adult literature. I review primarily young adult literature on my personal book blog, and I even created a unit plan about The Hunger Games for a Curriculum course a few semesters ago. With that in mind, I decided to look for an Animoto about The Hunger Games.
After doing a little searching online, I found the following Animoto for The Hunger Games, and I immediately bookmarked it to serve as future inspiration. I can definitely see myself using this Animoto (or even creating a similar one myself) as part of an introduction to a unit on The Hunger Games.
I like this particular Animoto because it provides a very brief introduction to the plot of The Hunger Games, without giving away any plot points. The images and the music selected both fit the overall tone of the book fairly well, and it's a short enough video to keep a teenager's attention. I might consider using an Animoto like this at the beginning of a unit, and a more complex version further into the Unit - or even asking students to create more complex versions later in the unit.
How do you think Animotos can best be integrated into a unit plan?
So you want to start a blog, or you've decided that you want your students to start a blog. What now?!
Personally, I would strongly suggest starting a personal blog on a topic about which you yourself have an interest or knowledge base. Write reviews of your favorite books, chronicle your attempts at cooking new vegetarian recipes, or create an online journal of the crazy things your kids do. If you create a blog about something you are passionate about, you will find it much easier to find the motivation and inspiration to actually write. You will find yourself eager to work on your new project, to explore different features and to find other bloggers with shared interests to interact with. When you have done all of this, you will have a basic understanding of why and how we blog, and you will be better able to introduce the concept of blogging to your students.
In chapter 3 of Richardson's text, he makes the argument that, much as teachers of writing should write themselves, teachers of blogging should blog themselves. It sets a good example for the students, and it hones the teacher's own skill set. A teacher who blogs consistently will be better able to effectively teach her students how to use blogs as educational tools.
I also agree with Richardson's suggestion of starting small with classroom blogs and building on skills throughout the year. I think Richardson makes a fantastic suggestion when he recommends that teachers provide students with a list of blogs to read and explore, as a way of familiarizing students with the concept of blogging. I would think carefully about which blogs I included on that list, and really make an effort to connect with the interest areas of my students. I might include blogs like Cat vs. Human, Post Secret, or It's Like I'm Magic. I might even conduct an interest survey of the class before creating the list of blogs for students to explore. Finding blogs that will genuinely interest students is a great way to make their introduction to the world of blogging a positive experience.
At the outset of the school year, I think the classroom blog should primarily be a place where students can go to look for important information. Throughout the school year, teachers can slowly increase students' involvement with the blog, so that by the end of the year students are comfortably responding to the teacher's posts, creating their own posts and engaging in meaningful conversation via comments.
What are some ways that you think you might introduce the topic of blogs to your classroom? How would you get your students excited about reading blogs and blogging themselves?
New literacies are basically new forms of literacy, created by advancing technology, which increase the many ways in which we can communicate with one another. As technology moves forward, our literacies broaden and change to reflect these new forms of communication.
In order to communicate effectively, we have to have at least a superficial knowledge of these new technologies. We should have at least a high level understanding of what a blog is, how Twitter and facebook and text messaging work. If we want to prepare our students to function effectively in the world outside of school, we need to find ways to teach them these new literacies.
NETS for Students are a set of standards which essentially measure the skills that students now need in order to learn and function successful in an increasingly digital environment.
NETS for Teachers, then, are a set of standards which measure the skills that teachers need in order to teach successfully in the same technologically advanced environment.
In many ways, teachers can learn these new technologies right alongside their students. One particularly effective approach might be for a teacher to create and manage a classroom blog. The teacher could regularly post about upcoming assignments, tests, and field trips so that students can read the blog from home and be aware of upcoming events. The teacher could also invite each student to write "guest posts" for the blog, which other students in the class could comment on, thus allowing for meaningful class discussion outside of the classroom. In this way, a single blog would allow an entire class of students to connect with one another as well as their teacher, without even being physically present in the classroom.
Do you think a classroom blog is an effective way of teaching new literacies?
As blogging and social media become more and more mainstream, teachers across the country continue to make decisions about which particular aspects of social media they may want to embrace and include in their curriculum. Many classrooms in Connecticut are already using blogs to help keep students and parents abreast of upcoming projects and assignments. But can blogs also serve as a platform for the students themselves?
Richardson's text does a nice job of outlining the various purposes of integrating blogs into a school environment, but in my mind the most compelling reason for me to consider asking my students to post and comment on blogs is the collaborative spaces that these blogs become. I've been blogging for several years now, and I currently maintain a book review blog. I have experienced firsthand the sense of community that comes from sharing your writing and receiving thoughtful responses to your work. There is a certain back and forth that exists between bloggers that can be truly motivational. I think this sense of community can be a great way to develop and maintain students' interest in writing, while teaching them to be acutely aware of their audience. It will show students that their writing is important, and not just to their teacher.
Richardson also makes the point that the use of blogs in the classroom can help students to understand new literacies, which will be essential to them as technology continues to advance. With that in mind, I can't help but think that to choose not to expose my students to the world of blogging and social media would be to do them a great disservice.
Richardson makes note of a few blogs in particular which are successfully integrating technology into the classroom. I was especially intrigued by Mr. C's Classroom Blog, which chronicles this teacher's experiences teaching in a fifth grade classroom. His blog serves a variety of purposes, among them that it allows parents and taxpayers to view, at any time, what his class has been learning and working on, and it creates a connection between, as he says, his students and the world at large.
If you are a teacher, to what extent do you use blogs with your students?
My name is Kim Maule. I'm a graduate student at the University of Saint Joseph. I'm taking this course about integrating technology as a part of my Masters of Education.
My undergraduate degree is in English, and I have always been an avid reader. In my spare time I run a book review blog, so at any given time I always have a book or three with me.
I am also an aspiring author. Last November, I participated in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, a yearly endeavor in which participants attempt to write a first draft of a novel (30,000 words) in just 30 days. This was the first year that I participated, and although I only managed to write 8,000 words, the experience definitely reinforced my love of writing and I feel more motivated than ever to continue to work on my novel. (That, or scrap it set it lovingly aside to start fresh on a new story!)
I currently live in Farmington with my husband Nick, our Miniature Pinscher Dunkin and our cats Jasper, Smokey and Simba.
My husband and I both love to travel, and we had a destination wedding in our favorite travel destination, Walt Disney World!
