Claire and Kristen have now posted 21 student blog entries. They are seeing a lot of student enthusiasm. The students really want to write pieces to put on their blog. The teachers came up with an editing rubric, which the students have to use to get their work published. They are finding that the students are really investing their energy and time to show the teachers quality work in order to get published. So the teachers are seeing a lot of quality work and motivation. The students are realizing they can't just post anything on the blog. There's a lot of hard work and dedication that goes into it first. The students then read their blog posts to the class on the Smartboard, which helps with fluency. This also generates pride in their work and makes other students want to do it, as well.
Thanks to Bob Rowan's help, Kristen and Claire figured out how to allow people (meaning parents) to comment on student blog posts. The teachers first will approve the comments before they go up.
Claire and Kristen are now going to play around with adding color and photos to blog entries.
http://www.fourthgradewritingwizards.blogspot.com/
Jeff has posted more than a dozen student blog entries so far on a wide variety of topics, from movie reviews to observations about Woodlynde and their own lives outside of school. These are primarily from his freshman journalism class. Students are working on more blog entries as of this writing. The students seem to enjoy the process and like seeing their work posted. It has worked out really well for Jeff, because he can have his students blog while they are in between major journalism assignments. Jeff has figured out how to also post pictures with the blog entries, so he is putting up a photo of the student who has written the entry. New blog posts are advertised on the Informer's Facebook Fan page and there is also a notification of the site on the Informer's website. One of the blog posts received a student comment.
His goal is to make sure every journalism elective student has at least one blog post, then to continue expanding the effort into his other journalism classes.
http://woodlyndeinformer.blogspot.com
Claire, Kristen and Jeff hope that more people will read the blog entries and comment on them.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Bloggers Meeting -- Tuesday Jan. 10
We just figured out how to alter the font color and add photos to the blogs. Very exciting!
Claire and Kristen continue to add student work to their blog, which is an ongoing goal. They are most impressed by how excited the students are about writing and seeing work on the blog -- along with choosing their topics. The students have shown great improvement in their writing (sentence structure, organizing their thoughts, paragraph writing and editing).
http://www.fourthgradewritingwizards.blogspot.com/
Jeff continues to post work by his 9th grade journalism students on the Informer blog. They are really enjoying seeing their work in print on a regular basis. It's a nice way for them to write about their thoughts and opinions on a variety of subject matter without having to go through the vigorous revising and editing process for articles that appear in the Informer. For the blog posts, they generally write about a topic (Woodlynde related or something that's interesting or bothering them in the real world) and then they sit down with me to edit it. My goal is to not only continue to have these 9 students blog but to expand the blog to my other journalism students.
http://woodlyndeinformer.blogspot.com/
Claire and Kristen continue to add student work to their blog, which is an ongoing goal. They are most impressed by how excited the students are about writing and seeing work on the blog -- along with choosing their topics. The students have shown great improvement in their writing (sentence structure, organizing their thoughts, paragraph writing and editing).
http://www.fourthgradewritingwizards.blogspot.com/
Jeff continues to post work by his 9th grade journalism students on the Informer blog. They are really enjoying seeing their work in print on a regular basis. It's a nice way for them to write about their thoughts and opinions on a variety of subject matter without having to go through the vigorous revising and editing process for articles that appear in the Informer. For the blog posts, they generally write about a topic (Woodlynde related or something that's interesting or bothering them in the real world) and then they sit down with me to edit it. My goal is to not only continue to have these 9 students blog but to expand the blog to my other journalism students.
http://woodlyndeinformer.blogspot.com/
Friday, December 9, 2011
Bloggers Meeting -- Tuesday Dec. 7
Claire and Kristen checked out edublog.com and visited fourth grade class blogs from New Zealand and Limerick, Ireland to gather information about how they organize their blogs. They also went onto their own blog and tried to learn how to import pictures, and change fonts and color (they are still working on this!)
Unfortunately, there was a communication issue among members about which date the group was actually meeting, which is why the rest of the group was not present.
Next meeting date is Tuesday Jan. 10, at 3 p.m. in Longa / Borchardt's room.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Bloggers Meeting -- Friday Nov. 4, 2011
Claire has created a classroom blog for her and Kristen's 4th grade students that they are actively using for their creative writing.
Here is the link:
http://www.fourthgradewritingwizards.blogspot.comThey also sent home a flyer for the parents that the students designed, inviting the parents to check out the blog. Parents and students have been posting numerous comments on the blog under student's work.
The students are learning cooperative learning, how to paraphrase, editing, reading fluency (they read the posts out loud), public speaking, paragraph writing, confidence in their work and showing it off.
Very exciting! ================
Jeff has created a blog for his Informer journalism students to muse about their experiences that primarily involve Woodlynde. The idea is that the posts will be less formal -- and typically shorter -- than a story that runs in the newspaper or on the website. Though they still will be well edited.
So far in its infancy, the blog currently has 3 posts from Jeff's freshman journalism electives (about X Block, Day 4 Olweus advisory, and 2 varsity soccer players), but will definitely have more in the coming weeks. There will be a link to the blog from the Informer website. We also will promo new blog posts from our new Informer Fan Page.
The blog link is:
http://woodlyndeinformer.blogspot.com/
Our next meeting is:
Tuesday Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. in Longa/Borchardt's room
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Bloggers Meeting -- Tuesday 9/20
The Bloggers PLC met to discuss online articles on blogging and what practical uses blogging could be put toward in the classroom. We also created a new blog, explored blogger.com, learned how to create and delete a post, and talked about the benefits / drawback to creating a class blog vs an individual student blog.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Meeting Reminder: Sept. 20, 3 - 3:45 p.m.
We are scheduled to have our first meeting about blogging on Tuesday Sept. 20, 3 - 3:45 p.m. in Room 309 (Borschardt / Longa's room).
Please also do the assigned reading. See:
http://woodlyndestudentblogging.blogspot.com/
for details and the links.
See you then!
Jeff
Please also do the assigned reading. See:
http://woodlyndestudentblogging.blogspot.com/
for details and the links.
See you then!
Jeff
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Blogging Resources
Each member is assigned to research the below website and report the information at the Sept. 20 meeting.
1) Article on Educational Blogging:--GELMAN http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume39/EducationalBlogging/157920 This is the same article in a bit more color: http://net.educause.edu/0DCB8C34-410B-40B5-80A2-410F32E5E4B0/FinalDownload/DownloadId-6C25AB084A7AAD2DC47D38680DEABD4A/0DCB8C34-410B-40B5-80A2-410F32E5E4B0/ir/library/pdf/ERM0450.pdf 2) Info about Educational blogging... this might be a good starting point: LONGA http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging 3) Edublogs: http://edublogs.org/ BORCHARDT 4) A wiki created as a resource for educators considering blogging: SIMSON |
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