Blogging

I was just reading Drew's ideas if you get writer's block and unlocked something I was thinking about before spring break. Thanks Drew :-) I have a blog that I use(d) with my class over the summer as a teaser to read a book and have a book club online with me and future classmates. I had about 10 kids utilize this over the summer. Now that we are in school, I haven't used it as much as I would like. Last year, I used it in all of my book clubs as an assignment that would normally be done in their notebook. They LOVED it! This year, I only have started it in one book club so far. I plan on introducing it to the rest of the class tomorrow. I hesitated this year to use right away because there are SO many technical issues that come up using it, and if I am with a book club meeting, I have to pull myself away from them to help with the computer issue. Hopefully my kids are comforable enough with our laptops now that I can use my "expert" kids to help out instead of me.

I often wonder if doing things like this at such a young age will grow old and boring at an early age. My kids are SO excited to blog right now with each other, but will they think it's that cool when they reach high school and have been doing the same thing for 5 years? My hope is that something new and "cooler" with the same underlying concept will come along to keep them as interested as they are now!!

Tags: socialmedia101

0 members like this

Comment by Laura Wiechert on April 12, 2010 at 10:57am: Christy-
I was reading your blog and you had a wonderful question! "I often wonder if doing things like this at such a young age will grow old and boring at an early age."
I feel you have such a valid point- I mean, sometimes I think my awesome Notebook10 activities are fun and interesting, but get minimal reactions from the students. I had one student tell me once, that he had a teacher use the same activity every chapter and that's why it wasn't exciting to him.
I feel I sometimes do the same thing. I'm currently in an anti-Facebook funk because it's grown old for me.

What I can say is I think it's different when we as educators pull social sites into the classroom. It's something they're familiar with but it's in a new setting. At the same time, we can't over use all our tricks in one place.
I liked your comment- thanks!

Comment by Christy Prudence on April 14, 2010 at 6:53am: Good point, Laura! When I use something new with my SMARTboard, my kids are much more engaged; even if it is something as simple as using a new color marker they haven't seen!! The kids will just keep us on our toes more and more each day so that we can change up our lessons to keep them interested.

As far as the social sites go: I have a blog with my class. I just started a wiki page. Essentially, I am using them for the same purpose: to share information with their classmates, but because it's a different tool, they think it's AWESOME!