Sustained+Blogging

=Take aways:=

- Getting past the “Cool factor” is difficult when introducing blogs into the classroom. It doesn't take long for blogs to go from something we do in our classroom to another thing we have to do. Why is that? Why do these very powerful tools repeatedly get tried, tested, and then put off just like paperwork in the classroom. Why is sustaining blogging in the everyday classroom so difficult?

- The approach: Blogs need to be conversations and that is what we are going to focus on.

- Conversations are two way communication - Web 2.0 or Read/Write web tools allow for this two way communication - You have to both speak and listen - or read and write

- In order to sustain blogging in the classroom you have to allow this conversation to take place. You have to give students both time to read and write.

- Mark Ahlness a 4th grade teacher in Seattle has adapted the silent reading time in his classroom to include reading blogs and web sites.

- Only after students are engaged in the conversation process can true blogging take place. There are many ways to use blogs...but blogging as a verb is a conversation.

- As a teacher, you can guide the conversation of the blog. Help students find other blogs or websites to read on the topic you are studying. Help them start the conversations and then encourage them to continue the conversation by writing on their own blog.

- We respond two ways in a conversation. There are the short reassuring “a ha” and the longer responses to questions or ideas. - These two responses of a conversation can also be translated into blogs and blogging by either leaving a comment (a aha moment) or be posting a response to someone else’s idea on your own blog. When we are in a conversation both are important appropriate responses that help to carry on the conversation.

- Help students set up a network of websites or blogs that they can read and respond too. - Look at how Mark and Clarence have set up networks of other blogs for their student to explore - Scott Hossack set each of his students up with an RSS reader and 15 websites and blogs to start the conversation from there, students added and deleted blogs as they took part in different conversations.

- By first focusing on the reading and responding to others we help students to “listen' in the blogosphere. Just like in real conversations listening before speaking is a good skill.

- When it is a student's turn to write or respond, how do you help them to understand an appropriate response? How do we teach them this new skill of digital communication? - We model it for them - Scott, Mark, Clarence - We hold conversations in our classrooms about writing, about grammar and about digital literacy...or the understanding of digital text. Good writing has not changed but what blogging allows our students to do is practice good writing in a new media.

- So if blogs are a conversation how do you assess a digital conversation? How do you turn blogging into something you can quantify? How you do this is ultimately up to you, but Scott Hossack as SAS gave the control back to the students and had them create rubrics that would grade these new conversations.

//**Mark Ahlness on sustaining blogging in the classroom:**// Get involved in the conversation with other teacher/educator bloggers – blog, comment, cite, etc. – and don’t wait for or expect local sustenance. Count on the larger community – it will sustain you and your efforts, if you are a part of it.

//**Clarence Fisher on sustaining blogging in the classroom:**// Connections, comments, and priority.

Make connections with other people, other classes and within your class. Don't turn it into a writing assignment but it needs to be a conversation.

Comments = ties into the first one. Comments are important as they show the conversation and that we are all learners together. I teach kids how to write good comments and leave plenty of them myself. We are all in this together.

Priority = It needs time in classrooms. It cant be an extra or an add on. it needs to be business as usual. it requires regular class time to show it is important.

//**Scott Hossack on sustaining blogging in the classroom:**//

I think that we need to as teachers recognize the importance of Blogging as a way of communicating. In the past we thought that writing should be formated in a certain way and that you need to revise and that everyone needs to be writing on the same topic. Yet with Blogging kids can entwined reading and writing and communicating with a purpose for them. You can even get students to buy into the importance of writing properly because they know that an audience will be out there reading.

=Links:=

[| Mark Ahlness Professional Blog] [|Mark Ahlness Student Blogs] [| Clarence Fisher Professional Blog] [|Clarence Fisher Student Blogs] [|Scott Hossack Student Blogs] [|Blogs Are Not the Enemy] [|Student created Blog rubrics]