blogging

//Why blog with your class? Why not just write in a journal or post work on the wall?//
 A classroom blog is a fantastic way to showcase student work. Once they knew their peers would be reading and commenting on their work, my students put a lot more thought and effort into the writing process. [| They tell me they really enjoy writing with their peers as their target audience.] It made their writing more authentic. It also allowed the students to share their opinions on topics that really matter to them, such as [|female players in the NHL] or [|why the NHL should be open to male players only].

A classroom blog allows our little classroom to connect with other students around the school, the community, the school division, the country, and the world. We put our blog address in the school newsletter and invited parents to read and comment upon our work. We visit other class blogs to see what students are learning about elsewhere. Other classes visit our blog as well. Blogging provides my students in a small, rural prairie community to visit the world virtually.  Blogging has developed a source of pride for kids in my class. Students have shared their own writing and ideas on their own time, such as [|Canadian Gurls] (a parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls"), [|Bear Lake Murder] (a mystery story), and [|Hunting] (a piece of creative writing).

//How do you use a blog in your classroom?//
 Blogging is most commonly used as a writing tool in Language Arts. However, [|in my classroom] I try to use blogging in as many ways as possible. A few cross-curriculum ideas:
 * English Language Arts: write [|fan-fiction] for a novel, publish [|creative writing], share poetry, post essays
 * Social Studies: reflections on [|current events], responses to [|global issues] , solutions to [|environmental problems]
 * Health: share [|personal mission statements], suggest a [|healthy snack]
 * Math: [|unit vocabulary mosaics] using [|Image Chef]
 * Art: [|photo essays]

Generally, students' blog posts are used as formative assessment. It's a way for me to check up on their learning and plan for the next step in our unit. Occasionally I will give the class a blogging assignment to be used for summative assessment. In this case, students are given a clear, 4-point rubric ahead of time so they know what I am expecting to be included in their posts. Blogging is also on the list of enrichment activities my students can choose when they are finished their other assignments. This free time in the blog has provided time for students to share pieces they are proud of as well as read and comment upon their peers' work.

//Ok, but how in the world do I get this started in my classroom?//
Before I even let the students near the computer, I started with a good ol' paper-and-pencil activity: Snowball. At the time, my Social Studies 7 class was learning about the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, and China's reaction to the award. I gave each student a paper with a quote or question about the topic, asked students to write their own thoughts and reactions, and sign their names to their comments. The only rules I set out were that everyone must write a thoughtful comment and everyone must sign his/her name. After about 2 minutes, I had students crumble the paper into a "snowball" and throw it across the room. Once the snowballs were thrown, everyone picked up another snowball, uncrumbled it, read the page, and added their own thoughts. We repeated the writing-throwing-reading about 5 times and then returned the papers to their original owners. A class discussion ensued: How did it feel to write when you knew your peers would be reading it? Did anyone get a comment on their page that disagreed with what you wrote? Did anyone get a comment that was hurtful, rude, or off topic? Is it ok to disagree with someone's opinion? How can you disagree while remaining respectful?

 The next thing I did was [|generate a set of blogging rules] with my students. Once everyone had a chance to contribute their ideas, I collated them into [|three rules]and had each student respond to the post telling me if they would agree to follow the class blog rules. This process gave students ownership in their blog while creating a public contract of behaviour they all had to abide by.

Our blogging adventure began with curriculum-based questions for students to answer as their own blog post. My first blog assignment came from a discussion surrounding the [|toxic spill in Hungary in October 2010]. I encouraged students to read each other's writing and leave appropriate comments. After all, if they are not taking the time to actually read and comment upon their peers' work, they might as well be just writing their responses on a piece of paper and giving it to me to read only. It is important to teach your students how to write [|meaningful, constructive comments]. Simply writing "I like it" does not foster discussion. I showed my students[| this very cute video]about writing quality comments. Once I was confident that the students were able to join into a blogging conversation in a polite, constructive way, we began to venture out into the blogosphere and[| visit other class blogs]and leave comments. Students left links in their comments back to their own blogs to allow reciprocation of visiting and commenting. I use my professional learning community on Twitter to find other class blogs, using the hash tags #comments4kids, #classblogs, #elemchat, and #edchat.

//A Few Blog Hosting Options//
1. [|Kidblog] (this is what I use for my own class blog) a. Easy to use, lots of teacher control, a great first class blog b. Completely FREE 2. [|Edublogs] (this is what my 7 year old uses for her personal blog) a. Somewhat more complicated to navigate b. A lot of customizable options c. Can be used for free, need to pay for the "premium" features 3. Other options available that I haven't looked into personally a. [|Class Blog Meister] b. Use [|Blogger]for a main class blog, each individual student has their own personal Blogster account that is linked to the class blog page. This is what [|Mavis Hoffman uses in Major].  c. [|Posterous]