[LM_NET] blogging with elementary students

[Cheryl Youse <cyouse@GMAIL.COM>]

Hello,

Along with one of my teachers and a tech, I wrote a brief article for
Knowledge Quest published in the March/April 2005 issue about blogging with
elementary school students at Warren Consolidated Schools in Michigan.  I
was involved with the implementation.  Chris Kenniburg was involved with the
technolgoy.  Barb McCormack was the classroom teacher with whom I worked the
most on the project.

We created a blog that was open for all to read but could only be posted to
by the media specialists of our school system.  Students from all elementary
schools in the system worked with teachers and media specialists to add to
the blog.  The kids loved it and for us, the most impressive aspects were
that 1-our students (who mostly were English speakers of other languages--23
different languages in our school alone) worked hard to communicate and put
their thoughts in English, and 2-that the children carried it to the next
level in their writing--they pulled in concepts they were studying in
subjects other than language arts to use in their story.  For example, one
student said they were learning about directions and the compass in social
studies so that became a part of the story.  We didn't anticipate that they
would do that on their own.

At that time, we also had had an author visit from Mark Crilley.  The first
blog was a spin off of one of his works that the kids contributed to as
well.  He was so interested in it, he came back free of charge for another
visit to see how the story ended.  It was a great experience.

-- 
Cheryl Youse, MLS
Media Specialist
Colquitt County High School
cyouse@gmail.com

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