My fifth graders are really getting into blogging. At this point, they’re still writing about topics assigned by teachers, but they love doing it. As of this week, all 6 fifth grade classes at my school have individual student blogs. This has been one of my goals, and the teachers and students are loving it!
Earlier this week we had Math/Science night, and parents came with their students to various classrooms to participate in fun, educational activities. I was hosting some interactive computer math games in my room. One of the dads who came in was asking me about teaching the fifth graders to blog, and he told me that this is what he does in his work. He works for a large company and travels around the country presenting seminars teaching businesses how to use blogs, emails, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter to improve marketing. His blog, http://www.emailyogi.com/, shares some great tips for using Web2.0 tools in the business world.
After talking with him, I became more convinced than ever of the need to teach our students how to responsibly use these tools in ways that will encourage them to be lifelong learners. As I have been a little immersed in blogging in the past few weeks, I decided to put together a little video about what I consider the most important reasons to blog with students. I uploaded it to TeacherTube, but it keeps slowing down for buffering. Then I tried Google Video. It plays smoothly, but video quality is fuzzy. Here’s the Google version:
2 responses so far ↓
G’day Frieda,
What a great video outlining the reasons to be blogging with your class. I only have three years till retirement but this year I will be working with a smartboard and I hopefully will be blogging and using wikis with my students. I have had a steep learning curve over my summer holidays. Can I use your video with the other staff at my school, to validate why I want to blog outside the bounds of just the school environment? I will also be adding you to my google reader.
I really enjoyed your video and shared it many of my associates across the country. Everybody had great things to say. Some plan on showing it during executive meetings to try to get senior staff on board with this ‘new, fangled thing they call blogging’!
Great work. Wish my kids teachers did this as well.
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