Hi,
I had several requests to post a hit to my request for success stories and tips on
starting a book discussion blog. Normally, I would acknowledge the individuals who
responded by name, but I only received "permission" from one person, so I omitted
names. Thanks for sharing!
Laura
Laura Brooks
Library Media Teacher
Amerman Elementary School
Northville, MI
brooksla@northville.k12.mi.us
I have had a fabulous year with online book discussion forums. Our school has a
Moodle site. At the risk of repeating something you may already know, Moodle
(www.moodle.org) is open source (therefore free) course management software (from
Australia) used in thousands of educational institutions. The wonderful thing about
it is that it is password-protected. Here's how it works: each student has his/her
own login name and password; you can set each "course" or discussion forum to be
open to guests or closed; it can be open to other members of the community or only
open to a group of students (your decision). It is conceived as a course management
tool and has a number of different features that you can either use or ignore. I
have used it so far as a book discussion forum for my 5th and 6th grade Mock
Newbery group (open only to those students signed up); I also used it to put up
reminders about meeting dates and links to relevant author sites. My 4th grade use
it to put up book reviews and responding to each other's reviews, and i have just
begun a "book log" using the "Assignment Module": by tweaking it I was able tomake
it work so that students can put up titles of books as they finish reading them.
These are private communications to me, and I will be able to respond to them with
reading suggestions. I am currently figuring out a wiki writing project on favorite
books for 5th grade.
There is a little bit of a learning curve here, but there are 2 books available
through Amazon. Both have been really helpful.
Moodle really has transformed the way I am able to work with students and the way
they are able to communicate with each other, across classes and even grades.
Your school tech department will need to put it on a server (I don't know the
technical details, but the moodle site no doubt has that information.
My students really feel safe on this site. Oh, and i have it set up so that I get
an email each time someone posts something: in the case of the discussion forums, I
get the full message that just went up, and I can delete if it seems appropriate to
do so.
****
I have a blog (csslibraryblog.blogspot.com) for my library and on it I have 5th
and 6th graders doing video book reviews. We use a stuffed animal as their avatar
(they really like this!) for safety reasons. I have them record their video with
me in the library. We have one written review, too, in an earlier post. I have
found that by starting out very cautiously, my administration and the parents are
very willing to let me go with this. I'm trying to teach the students, too, that
blogging can be safe if we are careful. There should be some new reviews soon by
my fourth grade mystery club....if you read the post about book clubs a week or so
ago, it explains how we are going to do that.
****
My advice would be to start out with a lot of supervision and gradually let go of
the control. Hope this helps. Good luck and please let me know if you get it up
and running!
****
Here's a link to my reading blog: http://nhhslibrary.blogs2teach.net/
I've done two blogging or blog-like projects with high school freshmen. In one
project students posted and commented on book reviews. In the other project,
students used a blog-like tool to keep research logs in which they commented on the
research process and shared search tips. Both projects were quite successful. We
found that when students composed work for publication on a blog they took greater
care and pride in their writing. Plus, adding a simple technology component to a
project seems to automatically boost students' enthusiasm for it.
I conducted a blogging workshop for faculty last month. They were excited about the
potential of blogs for use in the classroom and had lots of good ideas. For that
workshop, I built a blog which contained my presentation materials, and which
includes lots of examples of blogs in schools. Maybe some of those examples could
help your cause. Here's the link: http://buildablog.blogs2teach.net/
I can recommend two tools for your consideration:
* Blogs2Teach (www.blogs2teach.net) is a blogging platform designed
specifically for educators. It has lots of security features built in so that your
blog can be hidden from public view (i.e., only members of the class can see/use
it).
* NiceNet (www.nicenet.org) is the "blog-like" tool that we used for the
research logs. It's a virtual classroom platform that enables you to post
assignments, students can submit work, and you can conduct threaded discussions.
****
Our school (Klein ISD in Spring, Texas) subscribes to Gaggle.net. Teachers can
elect to sign up their classes for email, blogs, and bulletin boards. Teachers also
set the parameters. My students are blogging books they are reading. Their blogs
may be viewed only by other students in our class right now. Each time they write a
blog, it drops into my mailbox where I must approve it and release it before it can
be viewed by others. We're just starting blogs, but the kids are very excited about
using this medium to talk about their reading.
****
When I was with Warren Consolidated Schools a couple of years ago, we set up a blog
for all the elementary schools in our district to write a collaborative story.
Chris Kenniburg was the district webmaster at the time (I think he is with Dearborn
now). The students LOVED it, author Mark Crilley came and participated with the
students in the blogging end exercise, and my own students at Hatherly Elementary
School wrote a science fiction story that was sparked by the experience. The story
they wrote was published in Knowledge Quest (March/April 2005) a couple of years
ago. For my school, the most positive things about the experience were that our
students from homes that spoke a variety of languages (we had over 23 different
languages spoken in homes in our district) were encouraged to participate in
ENGLISH, and that they pulled information they were learning in a variety of
subjects into their story.
****
Our tech facilitator, myself and our Gifted and Talent Coordinator have recently
created a book review blog with about 30 GATE students in the first and second
grade. It has been a huge success! We've found it to be especially motivating to
some of our students who are reluctant writers. The great thing about blogs are
that all of the comments are sent to the site administrator. This was a whole unit
and we talked about safety issues and respect for the online community. All
students involved have posted one or two of their favorite books, but as you'll see
some have done many more. http://hkisbooks.blogspot.com/ Good luck!
****
If you can't convince your admin to go totally open on the blogs, you could try a
"closed" site like nicenet, where only kids with passwords were allowed, and you
can edit any posts. I've used it for a book discussion.
www.nicenet.org
****
We did something similar with younger kids:
Let me share how I overcame technology obstacles. Last Fall I decided to try to set
up a book review blog for the kids in
My school. A teacher in my building had seen one at a workshop and was interested
in replicating it. I had seen examples on LM_NET and decided to give it a try.
I mentioned it to my principal and although I'm not sure if he knew what I was
talking about, he said he's ask the Asst. Supt. in charge of that area. Her
response was that it sounded interesting but she was concerned about
cyber-bullying. I'm sure the minute she heard "blog" she imagined something like
MySpace.
So I decided to petition her directly.
I listed:
student outcomes
articles on the educational value of student blogs
state and local standards addressed (Language Arts and Technology)
examples of blogs from other school libraries
information about BlogSpot, the service we hoped to use
safeguards to student online safety
setting permissions so that I would be the only one allowed to add and edit content
denying permission for anyone to post comments
The email was over 6 pages long and she was very impressed with the extensive
research I had done on the topic. She then granted us permission to set it up and
post student work.
The blog is accessed from our school website and online today at:
http://strathmore-views.blogspot.com/
We have 43 entries- not bad for a K-3 school.
******************************************************
Josephine G. Dervan. Library Media Specialist
Strathmore Elementary School, Aberdeen, NJ
Online Instructor, University of Wisconsin-Stout
rderva at infionline.net
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