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How blogs can make the link

How blogs can make the link in Guardian Unlimited spotlights the good work John Johnston is doing in Glasgow. I loved the poetry project he did with the children from Sandaig primary school for National Poetry Day. Here is the link to the October project and additional information. I am delighted to hear what followed. Not only did he get comments from Britain, Australia, America and elsewhere but Carol Fuller, a teacher from Georgia, contacted him and asked if her class could write a drama piece using the children’s poems as a starting point. Her class is sending it to John’s school and the children will put it on. This is the connections piece of blogging that is so worthwhile. John talks about the audience blogs provide and the resulting feedback.

I couldn’t agree more with John’s take on leaving the comments function on. He says:

“To me it’s the thing that makes it. It’s starting a conversation. You’ve got to be on top of the comments. We’ve got a fairly hard blacklist set up to catch inappropriate stuff - and I check it. Most blogs or comment software can be set to moderate comments before they show up on the blog.”

It is about the conversations and connections and John is doing what all good teachers would do. When he says “I check it.” we know he is monitoring the process and overseeing the process. That’s what we have to do. Then if we do happen upon something those Innappropriate Comments =Teachable Moments. John’s closing comments put the emphasis in the right place. It is all about getting our students to write, think, talk and collaborate! Well said, John!

“If you put the effort in, I can’t really see any drawbacks. You’re basically getting children to write, and think about their writing, to talk about their writing to each other and do a lot of collaborative work with each other, to have an audience and to get feedback from real people. It’s a real-world thing.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 7:01 pm and is filed under About Weblogs, Imported. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “How blogs can make the link”

  1. Ewan McIntosh Says:
    January 15th, 2006 at 11:49 pm

    The great thing about Carol’s involvement, is that she became involved after doing a project with my old school Musselburgh Grammar. When I left she was desperate to do another project and I put her in the direction of John’s blog. She had a read, liked what she saw and the coolaboration was started. It’s an excellent example of how communication through blogs, the recommendations we all send out through them, can have a direct effect on the work done in class. I’ve also made a strong friend in Carol. It’s a shame that the Guardian articles were limited in words - the journalist contacted me and used a lot of the information given, despite not quoting it. But the worst thing, is that the lack of words about real projects seems to have been to make room for marketing hype from computer and software manufacturers. That’s less cool.