Yesterday was one of those days I’ve dreamed about for 5 months! I’ve watched class after class (through Twitter) start to blog. As an instructional coach, I spoke of the benefits, as did a principal at one of my schools. We both started to blog ourselves in order to fully understand the concept. Before Christmas break I started working with a 5th grade teacher and her class. Together we discussed all the different forms of communication. We reviewed internet safety and what it meant to have a digital foot print. We practiced commenting on others writing (in the class) on post it notes.
Over Christmas break I set up our blog. Yesterday we unveiled it! We reviewed some guidelines and expectations. The school has limited computers. (One lab for 700+ kids & a few computers in each room) I was fortunate to be able to get an afternoon time for the students to go to the lab and start blogging.
I was amazed at the ease of Kidblog. I showed the students how to log on and create a post while in the classroom. The kids were able to get started quickly after arriving to the computer lab! They were blogging pros in no time. They even started to discover some of the various features. A few experimented with changing the color of their text and font styles. We did have to convince a few that writing in “symbols” wasn’t too effective. I have so many ideas floating around in order to incorporate other Web 2.0 tools into our blogs. Integrating our blog into the content areas will also be a goal!
Thirteen students posted their first blog today. Nineteen students have their first blogs to finish up. The comments are rolling in tonight and I’m in awe of my Twitter friends! I wish I could be at the school tomorrow to see the kids reactions to getting comments from all over the world. (I’m only at this school one day a week.)
The photo above is my photo contribution for my 365 project for yesterday (Day 5). Still thinking about today’s photo. I will be posting soon.
Thank you Mrs. L. and 5th graders! You are off to a wonderful start!
Excellent work. Don’t the kids love getting comments from around the world? a PLN on twitter is a great way to do this.
Awesome! I’d love for you to share some of your ideas floating around! I’m in need! I use Kidblogs and enjoy the ease of it as well. How did you get your twitter friends to comment on their posts? Did you just ask? Seems simple 🙂
Would love to talk Blogs with you. I’m excited to start this journey with the students. As an instructional coach I’m only at the school one day a week. Hopefully the blog will continue to take off.
As for comments, there is a group on Twitter called #comments4kids Simple Tweet out that you have new blogs ready for comments and include the hashtag. You are bound to get some comments that way.
What grade do you teach? One thing I would like to see the students I work with do is comment on other blogs.
Kathy