Learning the Blogging Moves- Take Two!

Today we finally managed to create blogs for all of the students in my home group. At last they are all blogging!

At the beginning of the session I asked the students to work towards these goals:
- create a blog if they didn't have one
- follow five new people
- follow each LA with a blog (including myself)
- post a relevant comment on more than one blog (a must do was to comment on a post on my blog about Earth Hour)
- type their blog address into our school bloggers google doc

I worked with the students who had not created a blog yet and another LA assisted the other students to create learning stories and follow and comment on other students' blogs.

It was really interesting to see which students were confident enough to tackle these tasks on their own and which students felt they couldn't learn from anyone but an LA. It's taking some of the newer students some time to adjust to the concept that every adult and student at my school is a learner and that we all can learn from each other.

The LA who was working with me during this session commented at the end that she had learned so many new things about using blogs from the students and asked some of them to plan workshops for other staff members about using google docs and blogs. How many schools would that happen in?

Blogging is such a valuable way for students to express their thinking and also to develop the concept of writing for an audience. It is interesting to note that even though they may not be writing a rough draft in their books, they are proofreading, editing and adjusting their writing without being prompted to do so. It is also a great way to engage parents in their child's learning. I will be emailing the parents of students in my studio over the next few days and encouraging them to follow and comment on their child's blog.

Another thing that is evolving is that some students (mainly blogger veterans from last year) are starting to create blogs for specific purposes such as explaining their cultural background, sharing their passion, a diary of their life or as a travel diary.

Now the challenge for me is to keep up with reading them all!
If you are reading this and thinking it sounds interesting why not give blogging a go yourself? Blogger is free and easy to use. You can also change the settings to make your blog available only to those you choose to give your address to.

Could be a good way to reflect on professional practice, spark learning interests or get your students excited about interactive writing.

Go on! Jump in and give it a go! (I would be happy to follow you)