I recently received the following email from a high school
English Arts teacher:
Tracy, one of our teachers, has Brandon –
she said that he loves doing the blog; it’s the first thing he’s been excited
about all year, and it’s been a positive influence in his behavior in other
classes. He comes into my class any time he has free time to work on it,
as well. He really is enjoying this!
So now you want to know what the powerful strategy was,
right? What has made this student so
excited, positive, and involved? It is the
opportunity to write online. In the
teacher’s class, we started using Kidblog to give students this opportunity to
write for a larger audience in addition to the teacher writing for the teacher
only. In the student’s blog posts, students
can currently view each other’s posts and soon will be able to respond to each
other’s posts. The teacher, administrators, and parents (guests) may comment on student posts.
One of my fears having students write online was that
struggling writers would be embarrassed to have others review their writing,
but Brandon has squashed that fear. I
originally believed poor writers would shut down at the possibility of their
writing being viewed by countless others.
As mentioned above, the vehicle we are using to have our students
write online is Kidblog. Kidblog is a
free service that allows teacher to create classrooms with students. Teachers assign usernames and passwords plus
control who is able to view blog posts and comment. There are many additional features in the
teacher’s dashboard. Best of all, it is
CIPA compliant with students under 13 needing a parent permission letter
signed.
Happy Blogging!!
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