Why Weblogs Work!
Recently I had posted about Julie McCullers post, A Final Goodbye. She posted the following:
Due to the constant and relentless usage by authors all over our school, the following words finally reached the point of exhaustion this weekend. As a result of incessant overexertion, they all suffered a collapse and, unfortunately, were not able to be revived, despite all efforts. Each of these words will be deeply missed and although we will no longer be able to utilize them, their memories will linger forever in our minds.
The words that will no longer be used in our writing are: go, went, say, said, like, liked, is, was, stuff, some, eat, ate, thing, big, bad, tall, nice, a lot, happy, fat, pretty, very, good, and sad.
Then, Steve Dembo, a teacher from another state, leaves this great comment….
Unfortunately, I could not attend the memorial service. However, I did forward on the news to several teachers at my school who intend to discuss the tragedy with their own students. (BTW, I had to edit these few sentences three times before I eliminated all of those words!)
Julie can now share this with her students and they realize that writing requires effort but the result is worth it and writing can be fun! Hey, another teacher from another state is talking about their classroom! They also like knowing that teachers have to work at not “overusing words”, too. It’s becoming a team effort. It’s a joint venture realizing how reading and writing are becoming relevant and authentic in their lives. People care about what they are writing. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Then lo and behold, another fascinating comment arrives. This one is from Julia Williams, an English teacher in Louisiana.
Love your blog. What a creative assignment! I will definitely try this with my seniors.
The assignment that an elementary teacher is using in Georgia will work for an English teacher of seniors in Louisiana! You gotta love it and who knows, maybe the two classes can end up working together. That happened a couple of years ago when my group of fifth graders and Will’s journalism students met as a result of comments back and forth between Will and I.
I followed the link from the English teacher back to a wonderful collaborative weblog, Grammatically Speaking, written by English Teachers in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. It is a unique weblog and I enjoyed browsing through it - got some wonderful ideas. Go check this creative weblog out!
The interplay between posting and commenting is just one of the many parts that makes weblogs work in our classrooms! Just think! Julie, the teacher, has modeled an excellent writing piece that has humor and solid teaching elements in it at the same time. The whole class gets to enjoy the post. Discussion follows. Kids work at improving their vocabulary. Teachers help them in that effort. Students get to comment on the weblogs and comments even come in from different states. The community begins to grow.
See the wonder of weblogs. Our classrooms are becoming communities of learning reaching way out beyond our classrooms. Writing on weblogs starts the process, comments expand the communication, and the unique collaboration can take us to roads of learning that offer extraordinary possibilities. And all the while, as good teachers do, we get to develop more ways for weblogs to work in classrooms. We get our thinking and reflecting pushed in many ways that will help us learn and grow in our classrooms, as we strive to use technology in worthwhile ways for our students.
Exploring the power and possibility of putting weblogs to good educational use- that works for me! How about you? Join this growing group of webloggers! Include your students! Share the learning! Weblogs work in education!
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