I’ve been thinking about ways I can incorporate blogging into some of my student’s lessons, and came across what I thought was a great example.
- http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/dear-kaia-voicethread-and-video.html
- http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/
Mr. C teaches at Noel Elementary, and holds a session called ‘Comments4Kids’ once a week, where his students:
“…have the privilege of reading blog posts from around the world and leaving comments.”
For instance on one day, his students looked at blog posts from both Qatar and Iowa.
I thought this was an excellent introduction to blogging, in that it permitted students to interact, collaborate, and publish with their peers, and encouraged cultural understandings and a global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
I’d love to incorporate this type of lesson into some work I do with my 4th graders, who currently are at work on a long term project titled “Globally Connected”, in which they look at similarities and differences between their lives growing up in the U.S., and the lives of same-age students in other countries.
I do have some questions about implementation, however. In particular:
- Where to find blogs specifically from other places around the planet?
- Do I pre-screen the blog for age-appropriate content?
- How to assess my students’ posts?
3 comments:
Really nice idea for engaging your students in a global conversation. Also your questions about taking this path are worth considering.
A starting place for finding other teachers to collaborate with might be the Global Schoolhouse project registry. You could either find a project or post one of your own. [http://www.globalschoolnet.org/GSH/pr/]
I think the question to assessing blogs is key. Assessment is what will hold our students accountable! It will require them to be professional and produce quality work all while they progress in writing, technology use, and thinking. We want them to participate in blogs, but we also want them to get something out of it.
I found this rubric based on Bloom's Digital Taxonomy.
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/blogging+rubric.pdf
I think that it is a pretty straight forward rubric and provides some pretty good examples. In fact I may use the rubric in the future when I have my students to blogging. Hopefully it helps you out a little as you search for the answer to your third question.
teachercoy -
Thanks for the hookup with the blog post rubric.
It's very clear, easy to use, and applicable.
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