more blog thoughts - blogs in class
Further to my last post...
I was sitting thinking in class last wednesday (listening, of course) about using blogs to teach free writing. I'm still not sure of the best way of working it. I first thought of getting each student to start a blog, as we've done here, and write anything they felt like, perhaps I could provide some questions for inspiration sometime. They could comment on each others' blogs, correct them (although Iwould rather encourage free writing than accuracy) and I could see how they were going too. But, in my next teaching context, I have pre-teens for one or two weeks at a time. It might be a lot to get them all to start blogs. Then I thought of using the idea of a group blog. I could open it with my blogspot profile, call it something original like "Kat's Students' Blog" and then arrange one new blogspot account and give the password to all my current students (or a different one for each class or whatever) and make them able to post to the blog. They'd probably have to sign their names so I could tell who was who, but it could be an interesting way of doing it. As it's a summer camp, they could also tell their parents the url, so they can see what's going on from afar. And I could post questions sometime, rather as Debra does on our OLT site, to inspire online discussion and elicit the opinions and ideas I'm after (like "what did you think of the X activity in class this morning" and other useful topics). I can arrange some computer time during class time, and they have some access to the computers in their free time and activity time as well, so it could be nearly every day, which it would need to be to be any use in a class where few people stay more than 2 weeks. Of course, I could let them post after they've left as well, I suppose!
This should possibly have been posted to my Methodology reflection notepad, as it is as muc about teaching writing as about technology. Maybe I can just put a link there!
(Yes, I am up after 3am again - but I've now got all of the first round of assessment done except the webquest, so that is now priority no.1. That and pirates, which is taking up at least 5 hours of every single day between now and Sunday the 21st. Why do I do this again....?)
I was sitting thinking in class last wednesday (listening, of course) about using blogs to teach free writing. I'm still not sure of the best way of working it. I first thought of getting each student to start a blog, as we've done here, and write anything they felt like, perhaps I could provide some questions for inspiration sometime. They could comment on each others' blogs, correct them (although Iwould rather encourage free writing than accuracy) and I could see how they were going too. But, in my next teaching context, I have pre-teens for one or two weeks at a time. It might be a lot to get them all to start blogs. Then I thought of using the idea of a group blog. I could open it with my blogspot profile, call it something original like "Kat's Students' Blog" and then arrange one new blogspot account and give the password to all my current students (or a different one for each class or whatever) and make them able to post to the blog. They'd probably have to sign their names so I could tell who was who, but it could be an interesting way of doing it. As it's a summer camp, they could also tell their parents the url, so they can see what's going on from afar. And I could post questions sometime, rather as Debra does on our OLT site, to inspire online discussion and elicit the opinions and ideas I'm after (like "what did you think of the X activity in class this morning" and other useful topics). I can arrange some computer time during class time, and they have some access to the computers in their free time and activity time as well, so it could be nearly every day, which it would need to be to be any use in a class where few people stay more than 2 weeks. Of course, I could let them post after they've left as well, I suppose!
This should possibly have been posted to my Methodology reflection notepad, as it is as muc about teaching writing as about technology. Maybe I can just put a link there!
(Yes, I am up after 3am again - but I've now got all of the first round of assessment done except the webquest, so that is now priority no.1. That and pirates, which is taking up at least 5 hours of every single day between now and Sunday the 21st. Why do I do this again....?)
posted by Kat at 3:31 am
2 Comments:
I have a blog-formatting question for you.
I'd like to put a "recent comments" section on my blog too. How did you do it?
oh, um, I looked in the "help" for something completely different and found it by accident. I'm sure you can search for it, and may find it that way. Otherwise, try not looking, and you'll probably come across it...
If I tried hard, I could find the code that you need to cut and paste into your blog. But you try first.
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