Here is my hit about blogging. Thanks to everyone who sent such
wonderful advice and helpful suggestions. LMNet is truly a remarkable
resource.
--Mary Niedenfuhr, LMS
Hughes School
Berkeley Hieghts, NJ
mniedenfuhr@comcast.net
_*HIT:
*_
I did this last year and it was a huge hit!! I used Blooger or Blogspot (the one
google bought). Parents and students loved it. I am planning on using it this year
with my 7th and 8th grade students.
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A book review blog that I set up for 2nd and 3rd graders the year I retired.
http://strathmore-views.blogspot.com/
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You might be interested in Kim Cofino's work at the International School
of Bangkok. http://mscofino.edublogs.org/projects/
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I didn't set each student up with a blog. Instead, I created a LMC
blog, and I gave students access (logins, passwords). It worked quite
well for literature discussions. This year I plan to use it to help
facilitate Battle of the Books discussions.
I used edublogs.
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I recently completed a two-year grant through Montclair State regrading blogging
with elementary kids. …I have been blogging with 4th and 5th graders for a few
years. Originally, I set up a blog thru EDUBLOGS, but we now have a blogging
feature via our website provider, SCHOOLWIRES. I have also used BLOGGER, which is
the blog template Google offers.
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My district set up Moodle for blogging. I used it for book reviews with 4/5 grades
in conjunction with our Reading Olympics program. I set up a forum for a book
title and kids added their thoughts when they read it. It didn't go over as well
as I had hoped. I also had a monthly drawing for a free book by our visiting
author, anyone that submitted a review was entered to win. Even that did not get
them motivated. The classroom teachers really need to be on board, and where I am
they felt it was just adding to their full plate.
I'm now in a new school, and once things get normalized I may try this again.
Maybe for this new group of students it would be of interest.
Give it a try!
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I do blogging with my 5th graders. We read Joey Pigza Swallowed a Key and as we
read students are required to go out and blog a response to a questions regarding
the chapter they have read. You can check out our last year's blog at
http://btgs5.blogspot.com/
We have the students blog as Anonymous so we don't need to worry about e-mail
accounts. Students are required to sign their name to their post to get credit.
It has worked well and the kids seem to enjoy it. It is wonderful because it does
allow those shy kids to share in a "safe" environment.
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I set up a blog for a summer book club for about 18 rising 4th and 5th graders. It
was to promote our state book award nominees. I went through edublogs--its free
and after some study is pretty easy to use. They have a good forum for questions.
Our kids don't have school e-mail addresses so I set up a free google mail account
and ran the kids through that to set up passwords and usernames--they were
e-mailaddress+1@google.com <mailto:e-mailaddress+1@google.com>,
e-mailaddress+2@google.com <mailto:e-mailaddress+2@google.com>,
3-mailaddress+3@google.com <mailto:3-mailaddress+3@google.com>, etc., etc. That
took time and even more time when edublogs did an update and I had to go in and
reset all of the passwords.
You can see the blog I set up here: http://www.rocknread.edublogs.org/
This was a summer blog so participation was strictly voluntary. We gave students
their usernames and passwords at one of our meetings and let them post if they had
time during the meeting. We are still working on "commercials" and will post them
as we finish them--we did them with Microsoft PhotoStory. I am planning to put
them on the blog when we are finished with all of them.
I can see that blogging with students can be very successful if the adult can
realize that the student writing will likely not be "perfect"--grammar-wise and
spelling-wise. I think to expect perfection will make them think that contributing
to the blog will be a chore and something to be avoided. I started out expecting
way more than I should have--some students kept to my guidelines and others didn't.
I am going to do a survey with the kids to get some feedback about the blog.
Good luck with this--it was a good first experience for me. I'd appreciate it if
you would post a hit.
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I tried a blog with my 4th graders two years ago. I used
www.myteacherpages.com <http://www.myteacherpages.com> which is the site
my whole district uses for our webpages. They have a blog option on
there. It was something that I would do in the spring and the first year
it went well. Last year, our school was under construction and our
computer lab closed in March and I never got to do it with them. I hope
to get back into it this year. I did a lesson on what is a blog, I think
I might have a power point at school. Then I show them where and how to
find our school's blog, "Tiger Talk". Then we'd all go to the lab to try
it. I also have a letter I sent home with directions to do it from home.
Some kids continued, most did not. I think with more encouragement from
my end it could be better. You can see the little bit that we did at:
http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/SHanlon/myblog.cfm
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Our district has just approved the use of wikis. Would you please post a HIT on
your request for info. on elem. blogging? I'd love to tweak it just a bit and use
wikis instead!
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I set it up using Blogger.com but it was linked through the district
website.
My school is a K-3 school and there was administrator concern about
cyber bullying. So I set up a system where the kids who were interested
(some teachers also encouraged it) received a short worksheet asking for
title, author, short synopsis and who the book might appeal to. I then
did the uploading. Another classroom teacher had access as well as it
was her idea for the blog. However she was too busy to work on it.
I showcased the website to the kids in each class and had worksheets
available all day. I also set up a few of the 10 library computers with
the site so kids could use it as a selection device when they visited.
That really made it popular and the reviews started pouring in.
It was started in Nov. and by June I had over 60 reviews. Not bad for
younger grades.
I have a librarian friend in Florida who set one up in her middle
school. She used an option where kids could add content but the
librarian had approval of each entry and could delete anything offensive.
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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.
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I don't know if you're familiar with Tapped In or not. Tapped In is a community of
practice for educators at www.tappedin.org Tapped In has a safe and secure K-12
Student Campus that would be perfect for your students. You would create the room
and assign usernames to your students. When the students log in they land in their
classroom where they can post their reflective writing to an asych discussion
board. You can also collaborate with another teacher in your district or around
the world and have the students compare and contrast books they're reading. . ….
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I am exploring using blogs in my student teaching placement for a government
studies teacher who wants to put articles/links for students to review and
comment about. Any preferences for teacher run, student commenting on blog
types? I'm looking now at edublogs, but would like feedback on
strengths/limitations as well as on other blogs.
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