EduBlog Insights

I came across a handy little

machine that is not easily available

actually tried it myself but it seems to be getting good reviews. You can send files up to 1000MB (1GB)!

This is a  step-by-step:

2. Select the file to

3. Your email

full mailboxes.

.
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Joyce Hooper is the principal of J.H.House Elementary School. The name of her blog is Principal’s Quest. Her blog opens with this strong statement:

I’m a principal on a quest to learn more about weblogs and how they can be used with the students and teachers in my school.”

What’s really special about this quest is that one of the students in my weblog group last year created the spark that got Mrs. Hooper actually blogging. I had talked to Mrs. Hooper about blogging, encouraged her,and pointed out all the ways it could help students and educators. They could have voices and improve their writing and thinking. I said what a difference a principal could make by blogging. She agreed but never got around to it. It took Angelica’s enthusiasm about weblogs to really get Mrs. Hooper blogging herself. Student voices can bring about lots of good things! Read the empowering story on the principal’s first post ‘On a Quest.‘ Then think about the importance of student voices. Mrs.Hooper continued her thinking on another post, ‘I Think I’m Going to Like Blogging.’

“I think I am going to like blogging. It’s another forum to include students, teachers, parents, our business partners and the public. I want my weblog to be interactive.”

And that brings me to the heart of this post, the comments feature on blogs. The combined voices of student, faculty, staff and others outside the community interwine to make this blog truly interactive. And just think, the blog is meeting curriculum objectives in a way that makes character education come alive, not just a weekly word of the week that’s read over the intercom in the middle of ten other announcements. Character education is getting top billing in a blog and the kids are talking about it. Plus they are finding real life applications to think about and then make comments that they know will be read. They love writing to their principal and they love having a voice.This is getting longer than I meant it to be but I couldn’t close without giving you a sampling of a few of the comments on her blog.:

Martha, a student, responds to a post about consideration…….

Amanda, a girl in my class didn’t have paper and I gave her like 10 pieces.

Martha

Bob, a blogger outside the school community comments……

Keep up the good work. I like the tone of your posts. It’s positive and optimistic. Thank you for taking the time to express those values.

Bob

Mike,a student, wants to be heard and is able to express his frustration ……

Well I am a part of the SLT and the SACS commitee was supposed to come and talk to us but the meeting got canceled. I felt so un important and let down. I felt like I was not important enough to even have an adult conversation with the SACS commitee. I am so mad that just because I am a little kid I have a little mind because I don’t. P.S I am very intelligent.

Mike

(The above post was in reference to an evaluating committee visiting the school and Mike wanted the chance to share his knowledge about his school. He had a place to voice his feelings. I agree with him -he is very intelligent!)

Kerri, a student, applies the meaning of the word perserverence……

Dear Ms. Hooper,
I was thinking about what you said and the teachers have a lot of perserverence. They get up in the morning and come to school and teach us everyday.Kerri

A third grade teacher notes how two character traits can collide…….

Hi

Mrs. Hooper.

Your last 2 posts about initiative and self-control remind me of one of my students. This student has lots of initiative but almost no self-control. They are constantly on the lookout for things they can do without having to be asked but when they find something they jump up and do it immediately whether its the middle of class or the middle of the street. I just had the thought that initiative without self-control can be as much of a hindrance as a help. Great weblog by the way. Mrs. Davis is helping 3rd grade start our own and we’re really excited about it.

Now I haven’t read ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ that Will posted about here. I plan to but I just have to think that blogs like this in elementary schools could be great building blocks for the beginnings of this wisdom of crowds phenomenon.

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This morning I invited Marcos to read my post on Inappropriate Comments = Teachable Moments. Marcos is one of my fifth grade students in  The Write Weblog  group.I asked him if he would like to blog about the matter. He said yes.  His  post  on the matter follows:

My Opinion About Weblogs

I have just finished reading Inappropriate Comments=  Teachable Moments posted by Mrs. Davis. It made me form an opinion about why weblogs should be allowed.

I think weblogs should be allowed in schools because it is part of our education. Weblogging has made me a better writer and thinker. Sometimes we get an inappropriate comment but that doesn’t slow us down. It is not the end of the world because someone has called you a bad name. You can’t stop that from happening. When we get an inappropriate comment we learn a lesson and that lesson is not to be like that person. We also learn responsibility on the Internet. If you were in a race and someone called you a bad name, would you stop? I think not. Martin Luther King Jr. was called bad names all the time and it didn’t stop him from fulfilling his dream.  Thinks like this happen all the time, even out of school. So, please don’t shut down weblogs.

Marcos needs to keep on blogging. He’s a good thinker and writer. Weblogs are helping in that area. Go check out his excellent blog, Marcos’ Seaworld of Facts.

An inappropriate comment has arrived on a student site. So……….

This is a teachable moment. It’s definitely not a moment to shut down blogs! It was a moment where I took immediate action. I deleted it. I happened to see it on the day it was posted so chances are I got there before others did. That’s not always the case. And that’s OK. Really, it is. Think about it. Can you protect your students from every inappropriate remark that might be said to them? No! But you can teach them that an inappropriate remark is not a reflection on their work buta reflection on some other person. We have an easy solution. We can just delete it and move on. We have other things to focus on, things that are more important and more worth our time. We educators are in a unique position of being able to give them excellent guidance. Let’s do that instead of worrying that an inappropriate comment is the end of the world. It’s not. It’s just a sad reflection of our times.Let’s work to change it. Sometimes when I see all the stuff that is posted on blogs by teenagers I find myself wishing that someone had given them some guidance. Lots of them are just not thinking. We need to build these types of things into our discussions in our classrooms. I like to think that good teaching about responsible weblog use would help. No, we can’t reach all but we won’t reach any if we keep burying our heads in the sand and keep worrying about what MIGHT happen.Weblogs give us a place to really responsible Internet use. We’re not going to have 100% success but that should not stop us from trying. We educators need to move on. Moving on, to me, is working together with my students to show the possibilities, the potential that weblogs can provide in our classrooms. It ties right in with what Will said today in his excellent post, Writing=Success, Blogs=Writing

Here’s an excerpt:

In the little spare time I have had today, I have spent it commenting to students on a weblog entitled “A Look at Bullying.” The tagline says “ESL students exploring an issue of consequence.”  This

is giving students a voice with the teacher on the side guiding the

conversation. We need more like this. Pick a good issue and get your

students involved. What a great use of weblogs! 
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    Today on Innovation Odyssey they are rerunning “A Place to Be Heard: Elementary writers learn to love their weblogs.”

Weblogging to Success features Helen Turnbull’s middle school students blossomed as writers through a class weblog.

We need to form ‘Blog Fellows’. Now wouldn’t that be awesome?

    If I Were a Carpenter: The Tools of the Writer by Roy Peter Clark of Poynter Online

• Observe word territory. Do not repeat a key word within a given space, unless you intend a specific effect.
• When tempted by cliches, seek original images. Make word lists, free-associate, be surprised by language.
• For clarity, slow the pace of information. Short

  sentences make the reader move slowly. Time to think. Time to learn.

  See what I mean?

• Strive for “voice,” the illusion that the writer

  is speaking directly to the reader. Read the story aloud to hear if it

  sounds like you.

• Place gold coins along the path. Don’t load all

  the best stuff high in the story. Space special effects throughout the

  story, encoruaging readers to find them and be delighted by them.

 Now that’s just 5 of

way to have fun while learning and writing on blogs!!

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I love learning and I love teaching. Technology is right up there, too. It adds so much to the teaching and learning, plus it just keeps getting better. Over the past years I have learned so many technologies that my head spins. I came upon blogs a
little over three years ago. None of the other technologies have affected me quite like blogs have. I’ve been mulling this over for some time. Why blogs? Why is it that everything I study or teach jumpstarts my thinking to blog applications? What is it about blogs that consumes me, especially in elementary settings where the resistance from policy makers will be formidable? The possibility of inappropriate comments seeping through, loss of control of the learner and the teacher, and just the general fear and resistance to something new that they don’t understand are but a few of the roadblocks to blogging in classrooms. The other roadblock mentioned constantly by educators is time. I have agreed, shook my head and gone away feelingfrustration with our lock-step method of teaching of a number of prescribed skills that has become our basis for accountability in our schools.

Blogs give me a space to work with students and many, many opportunities to see students actually begin to enjoy writing. I can
honestly say that I have not been able to capture that kind of joy from students in the past. These spaces are free of testing, grading, drilling, measuring and comparing. I like having a space on the web for students to explore and play with language. I can join the students in fooling around with words and we are working together to create pieces of work that are creative and give students a feeling of ownership. It’s a journey we take together. They can begin to experience the power words can have for them and for others. The words don’t have to be perfect. The space can be messy. We get to suppose, wonder, be curious, examine and re-examine. We spend time reading other weblogs and get lots of ideas. The exploring and learning is wonderful and they are on the path to becoming good writers. I’m on the sidecelebrating, suggesting, sharing and marveling at what they have to say. We delight in reading our writing to each other. We help each other. We clap a lot. We laugh a lot. Laughter truly synthesizes learning.

Why just last Thursday my students listened to Aaron Campbell say goodbye to his students on The New Tanuki. My students were spellbound. They were mesmerized by his words. They experienced the power of his words. We talked about it afterward and it was special. Soon afterward they began wondering and composing some short pieces that they would say if they could create some Quick Time clips to share on their blogs. Wow! I know we”ll be moved by their words, too.

So, I think the reason I am so hooked on blogs is the teacher-student/student-student discussions that come out of blogging. We are connected to others. Our learning arena is giving students a space to use their voices and see results. Students see reasons to write. I’m becoming a better listener and I just keep learning. The stage is larger. The possibilities are limitless!

So I am going to start saying to those educators who say they don’t have the time that they need to seize the time! Seize the time to use blogs to write about what you are learning. Let your students do the same. Think about using blogs in meaningful ways to let students write about what they are learning and thinking. Writing let’s us know what our students know and it let’s us know them. What could be a better use of our time?

Are you familar with Bloom’s Taxonomy? I was teaching a class of Juniors and Seniors how to create a fun,
interactive activity on PowerPoint using question starter words for the six categories of Blooms. A professor had asked me to show them a good PowerPoint activity. They would be using photos and creating callouts to make little speech bubbles.I assumed they were familar with Blooms. My mistake! Not one of the students had a clue. Well, I had my work cut out for me. One student said she wondered what we were going to be doing and assumed it must have something to do with income tax. Yep, I had a ways to go. Not to be deterred I scrambled and did a quick lesson on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Oh, for more time with this group! They ended up having fun and I had fun showing them some of my elementary students work with Blooms. They were amazed!

I have found that you can improve thinking skills at any age using good questions for critical thinking. Students can even have fun with it while they are learning. Let’s not limit ourselves only to who,what, where, when and why. How about describe, summarize, review, interpret, apply, examine, categorize, predict, create, decide, conclude and recommend for starters? Students are up for the challenge but we have to do the teaching, the introducing, the developing of good activities to get them engaged.

Technology can shine here. In the elementary school where I taught we used Inspiration and developed a Jeopardy game filled with questions created from key question words from Blooms. Students love this activity and they are really developing good thinking skills.They create the questions and then switch computers and play the game someone else has created. They became little pros creating PowerPoint presentations where they asked each other and answered high level question. We used Microsoft Publisher and created mini posters with great backgrounds that set off quality questions developed by the students.

They love striving to make questions that push their thinking beyond rote recall. You can do this in any content area. You can do it with,many technology programs.

Weblogs are perfect places for sprouting good thinkers! My fifth graders acted out a skit to get to know the Bloom’s categories. Now I’m not worried about them memorizing definitions but I do want them to become better thinkers by “bumping” their thinking up a level or two. Students can and do rise to the occasion. Keep them engaged and thinking! Use weblogs to let them write about all their good thinking. Believe me, Bloom’s Taxonomy is user-friendly so go have some “Blooming” fun!

We’re making connections using weblogs! My fifth grade blogging students posted “Dear Teacher-To-Be posts. My GSU students(who will be our future teachers) are just now learning about blogging. They replied in the comments section to the students. Here’s a sample from Patrick: