How 8th graders view blogging
Saturday, July 9th, 2005Take a look at this incredible list of how 8th graders view blogging. This is taken from some of the final posts for the Willauer Middle School blog on kayaks.
Talk about listening to student voices….these are
voices that we should definitely hear. It will show you the power of
blogging with the students.I blogged about them a little while back on this post.
Here are the points they made:
- Fun with technology and self-expression
- Improving Writing and Communication Skills
- Creating a record for the future and a window to the world outside the classroom
- Creating shared experience
- Getting beyond, “what did you learn today?” “I don’t know…”
- Experimenting with styles of communication and expression
- Sharing knowledge
- Gaining confidence from seeing your ideas published
- Working and playing well with others
- Learning from others
They elaborate on each point. Listen to this:
This is a life skill I will take with me when I move on to high school;
a new exciting technology that will benefit me. I believe that to
really understand something, I have to be able to reflect on what I‚ve
learned. The more I wrote about the boats, the easier it was to learn.
and this….
In the past my family would ask me what I‚d done at
school, and I‚d just give them short, vague answers. By reading my
blog, my family was able to understand what I‚d done that day and we
could discuss it at the dinner table that night. It was a fun thing to
do in the end and now I am thinking about making a blog of my own.
and this…
We had to write about something that we thought was
interesting and informative. We had so many options of what we could
do. We had to write, but we didn‚t have to just write about what we
actually did, we could also write about our feelings throughout the
process. I could put my personality into it and not have someone take
it out and say „No, that‚s not allowed.‰ I could be funny and then
became serious.
Oh there’s lots more. Read every single reflection. It made me think of my NewsQuest student reflections. I would love for those fourth and fifth graders to read these reflections by these eighth graders..