Oh Happy day!
For the last five weeks I've felt like school had yet to start. Sure, students filed in and filed out; we read much of Beowulf; but we couldn't blog. The class blog has been my baby for the past two years. When my Central Office dropped the hammer on Blogger.com, I had to fight for incorporating blogging into the curriculum. Then, I had to figure out how to use Edublogs.org.
I am not all that savvy, so it took me a while to learn. But finally, after five weeks of waiting, my students will begin posting. Their assignments are due on Wednesdays. This deviates from my previous method of Friday due dates. One of the advisements offered by last year's students was that I should allow the blog posts to generate discussion in class. I had simply been allowing the discussion in class to generate the posts. That is one way the blog has developed over the last three years.
Blogging in the classroom continues to demonstrate why it has merit. And so long as it continues to do so, I will continue to utilize it. In fact, it strikes me as unfortunate that so few teachers are using this medium. When one c0nsiders how connected our world is, especially in terms of the business world, it seems obvious that teaching the craft of blogging would follow. If more teachers had students blog about, say, Beowulf, then our students could interact on a global scale. How impressive would that be? Mrs. So and So in Connecticut has her students share their thoughts about Othello. Meanwhile, my students are also sharing their thoughts about Othello. Both sets of students, with different teachers offering guidance and support, help each other get through the play.
Anyway, here are the sites, but wait until afte 2:oo p.m. on Wednesday to check it out:
Just Waking Up
Is the Day Almost Over
I am actually more excited about this than I get over my own birthday. Hooray Blogging!
posted by Mr. McNamar @ 8:47 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I am interested to know how they can each sign their names. Did you sign them each up for their own blogs?
I was thinking another way you could do it with WordPress would be to make each kid a catagory and they could just tag their entry with their name that way.
Students signed up for their own blog--though I told them they don't ever have to use that site. Then, under "Nickname," student put their first name. After that, they choose their nickname from the dropdown button for screen name (or some variation of that). Once they've done that, I added the students as users (authors). Students go to the url that my central blog is located at, and they sign in using the login button. It is much more complicated than it needs to be, but it works!
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