Chapter 3 was about how to use a weblog in a classroom. I find that reading about how to do something is difficult and in only a general way useful to get an idea about how to create a weblog. I need to do it, like we did in class. That is how I learn best. Kerri's lesson last week was what I need. Thank you Kerri. I was most interested in the security and safety section on blogging with students. This is still a little unclear to me. It is clear to me that I need to have a thoughtfoul plan about using a classroom weblog that is interactive with my students. I will need to inform administration and the studnet parents of the plan and get approval before implementing it. The author mentions a safety tool called RSS for monitoring student activity on the weblog, which I am very interested to learn about .
Reading this chapter motivated me to search the internet for math classroom weblogs. I found many blogs to look at to help give me ideas of what can be done. I learned that you can post videos, or cartoons or songs or poems or links to math sites etc. This could be valuable for providing alternative presentations of concepts for students that need more processing time and different presentations fo the concepts. I also learned how the weblog can be used to get feedback from the students. They can answer poll questions, they can input their own music video, they can input questions in the form of posts etc, etc. The work I did to look at example classroom weblogs was very valuable to help me synthesize my thoughts on how I could use a classroom weblog. A good example was Ms. Ionno's 6th grade class room weblog http://weblogs.pbspaces.com/ionnoj/. Her layout was easy to work through. I could link to websites on pie day, on how to solve equations with multiple variables, I could read her posts on upcoming tests, homework and stuff going on in the school & I could read posts by the students about their learning. I decided the weblog is a great source of information for the students.
I too like to see the actual sites, rather than just read about the concept. i had a supposedly great idea to start a WIKI to post student work as an on-line literary magazine, but once you actually get into the layout, you see how hard and time-consuming it is for us non-graphic design types. It took me some time with Kerri, then giving up on the limitations of free WIKIs, turning to PAY for iweb and training time at the APPLE store, being told by the TECHIES that what I want to do isn't quite there yet for the average user.....I am, however, finding that a few years has made the technology much more user friendly.
ReplyDeleteBorrowing layouts from others should really help and I have clicked on the site you like. It does show the collaborative advantages of the web to check out something you recommend--rather than just randomly checking out all the sites Richardson mentions. I spent too much of my summer vacation checking out websites that were deadends as teaching tools.