Getting Started

I've been mulling over getting into blogging and some other technologies with my students since last year. Unfortunately we started the school year off with no real access to the computer lab and so my interest slowly fizzled.

Thankfully, just over a week ago, I went to the MACUL conference here in Michigan with some high school teachers. This got me fired up about getting back into exploring tech with my students. Will Richardson, of Weblogg-Ed fame, especially got me excited by his presentation on Podcasting, Vodcasting, and Screencasting. Since then I've been digesting as much as possible from several other educators' blogging and podcasting efforts. I'll try to link to them soon when I start messing with this template. I have been particularly looking at what Clarence Fisher is doing. He has his own site plus several others for his classes/students which you can view easily with his superglu site.

Starting the second half there's one hour a day the cpu lab is free--hopefully I can get the students immersed during that time in reading blogs by others for a few days and then get them going successfully on their own. Talking about it with them has got them more excited than I've seen them in a while. Many are discussing what they will want to blog about. We've all got cabin fever here in Negaunee and the two feet of snow we got last week hasn't helped their mental health. Hopefully the excitement and interest in blogging will get us through the next few weeks before spring break and then we can maintain it afterwards for the end of the year.

I am hoping to use blogs in a couple ways if given the time. One is as a means of discussing and reflecting on literature--reflective blogs. I will do this with a high school class of Andy's and Sara's who took me along with them on this conference. The other will be more of a free form blog where students share things they feel they are experts on. This is the area where they are most excited. Some of them are deep into WWII history and want to blog about that while others are interested in certain music groups, tv shows, video games, or sports. Hopefully I can find a way with these where they can maintain this excitement in a safe environment but still get involved in conversations with others, which to me is the most exciting part of blogs--getting into the social aspect of learning and teaching.

Tune in for more as we start to plug in.