What a week!
What a week! I’ve been trying since last Tuesday to sit down and write my thoughts but suffice it to say that there haven’t been too many moments to come up for air! Lots going on, not the least of which is our College of Education securing a PT3 grant that has lots of good things written into it. One part of it is to focus on the use of communication tools to enable real-time support for student teachers and novice teachers throughout the induction years. The Literature Circles instructor and I have been discussing how to implement the best use of weblogs to foster the type of communication that will be or real service to these beginning teachers. We will be following the same group that has been working on the Literature Circles edublogs. We’re at the brainstorming part of our thinking.
And this same group took a field trip to J. H. House this past Monday. It was fantastic. I’m writing that up on the Wrinkles site. My favorite part of the day was watching my Wrinkles group interview the Georgia State students. Weblogger to weblogger in a face-to-face interview! Can’t beat it!
A lot of really good data is coming out of the Literature Circles project. One segment that I wanted to share with you is some more of their thoughts on weblog possibilities….
Mary Beth leads with the following observations:
“As we continue to use this weblog system, I can’t help but think of all the possibile ways to utilize it in the classroom. I think that when students are working on an extensive science fair project, that this would be a great way to communicate with one another. Weblogs can also be used with interactive spelling homework assignments, social studies fact reporting and posting math questions. What if a teacher even had a mystery/ riddle she asked to solve each week. Wouldn’t it be fun to view other student’s answers and responses? Maybe the person who solved the problem could then be responsible for making the next post. It is truly a useful tool if used properly. Do you have any other suggestions on how to use Weblog?”
Talesha’s visit to J. H. House sparked a lot of thought:
“After visiting J.H. House Elementary today, I realized that the weblogs can be used in a variety of ways. At this elementary school, the students watch thirty minutes of CNN News daily. After watching the news, the students could make postings to their weblogs about various topics and they could have open discussions about them. I think this will be great. Just like they had to use Bloom’s Taxonomy for their Inspiration Webs, I believe that the students could use Bloom’s for this activity as well. While responding or posting to the site, the students would have to use higher level thinking. This activity could be started in the fourth grade. The students could type their responses and the teacher could post them. This is similar to how it is done at J.H. House. If this is successful, the teacher could find another class to discuss with. Therefore, not only would their class be posting and responding, but so would others from other schools or classrooms.”
Candice thinks the use of weblogs could be expanded into many subjects:
“Using weblogs for subjects other than language arts might be useful for students in posing questions using bloom’s taxonomy. Also, students might make it as a form of communication with the class on information relevant to their studies found on the internet. This could be the beginning step of a large circle of study buddies with the convenience of not having to leave home and meet.”
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