Like so many teachers before us, Tammy and I now need to decide what happens to the blogs at the end of the year. Since this is not a Blogmeister account, there is no technical reason why the blogs must come to an end. And yet, we feel some responsibility to oversee these relatively young children who are exposed to the world through their blogs.
Tammy and I have decided to send a note home to the families, we will ask them to return a form indicating whether they are now going to assume responsibility for the blog or if it should be deleted at the end of the school year.
Part of me is sad at the thought of the blogs going away, both because of what we learned from them and from the community they built. I’d also like for them to stay available so that I could have my own students look at them next year before they start blogging, IF they start blogging.
Best of all would be if the students continued writing. Then I’d have a window into their lives as they moved on to middle school. I would like to see how the blogs changed away from teacher guidance and six-trait lessons. Would they degenerate into journals or would they continue to be a place where the students crafted their writing? I suspect the former rather than the latter.
And selfishly, having the blogs continue on would give me one more connection back to Malaysia when I’m trudging through the cold, dark days of Minnesota. Blogs– stretching around the globe, keeping people connected. Gotta like that!
It seems almost every day I find another reason to be delighted with our blogs. Today, my delight is in easy connections made between students who are 9000 miles apart and have only met via blogs.
Our student guests from the USA and from other classes in our school have left another spate of comments and all of us at this end are savoring them. Popping open each comment box is much like biting into a bon bon from a box of mixed chocolate; we aren’t sure what’s going to be in there, but chances are we’ll like it. (Thank you, Forrest Gump.)
Some of what we are liking includes…
- Kids finding common ground discussing topics such as what to do during a power outage, the experience of learning to ride a bike, or the problem of siblings who are bullies.
- A fifth grader in the USA who played the part of Prospero last year in his class production of The Tempest connecting with the two student bloggers who are sharing the part in their class production this spring.
- Other students with 6-trait writing experience making comments about the bloggers’ word choice or lead sentences.
What strikes me about this list, is how often the word or idea of experiences is mentioned. I can’t think of another place in our curriculum where student’s ideas and experiences are so central to the action. That realization is both exciting and worrying.
Ownership and commitment. Every year as a classroom teacher I struggled to find a way for students to develop the class rules and to have ownership in them. I have many colleagues who succeeded at this, but I have never gotten it right. Some years the process dragged on forever with the kids wanting to prescribe specific punishments for each type of infraction. Other years, they wanted to have 15 rules which were too many to keep track of. Other years, they went through the motions but never bought into the process or the rules.
Therefore, I was interested to find Steve’s blog. He uses a class blog and now group blogs as part of his grade 9 World History course. As a late-comer to his blog, I finally took the time to read the earlier posts and came across this gem of a lesson in which the class develops their Acceptable Blog Use policy.
I hope he publishes a later post reflecting on how the process worked. Even more, I wish I could observe the process in action, see how he balances the need to have certain guidelines in the policy, with the need for students to feel ownership. How long does he let the conversation continue? How much of the synthesizing is done by him?
I suspect the process will go very well for a number of reasons. Rather than starting from scratch, he has presented his students with a packet of readings, including the Blog Policy and Student Blogging Handbook from Bud’s wiki. Another reason for potential success is his use of the fishbowl or Socratic Seminar technique. Students keep changing roles so I suspect they remain actively engaged for a longer period of time.
I’d like to adapt his lesson plan. Or maybe it doesn’t need adapting– the readings are at a reasonable level for grade 5 students. Add this to my growing list of resources I plan to use next year when I’m blogging in a different country with different students.
I originally started this blog to learn how to blog so I could use the skill with my students. However, as I moved deeper into figuring out the nuts and bolts of blogging with elementary children, I grew frustrated that I had so little access to the wisdom and files of other teachers who are blogging with children.
To that end, I decided to blog the experience of blogging with children in hopes that someone else who is trying to get started can learn from my successes and struggles rather than creating everything themselves from scratch. As such, it has only been partially successful. I have been able to share what we are learning, and the tools we are using, but not the documents we have created — until now.
Bud has created a Blogging Policies and Resources Wiki that provides a repository for blog policy documents such as AUPs, student guidelines and other useful materials. However, since this is a wiki, it is more than just a storage place. It is also allowing us to tap the collective wisdom of other teachers. Anyone who drops by is able to comment and edit the documents online. I invite and encourage you to stop by and use your wisdom to help us craft useful resources.
Tammy sent home a note telling families how to access the blogs. Now a few of the moms have visited and left comments for their children. Some comments are supportive. Some are less so.
I have worried that our children might receive inappropriate comments from a child in the class writing anonymously, or from someone outside of our community. Anne dealt with this issue elegantly in March. Her discussion with her bloggers puts action to Will’s convictions about the need to teach our students how to use these technologies appropriately rather than just blocking their access to technologies that they are already using. .
Now I’m realizing that either of those culprits would be easier to deal with than inappropriate comments from a parent or sibling. We didn’t give our families any comment guidelines; we need a letter that shows families constructive ways to respond to their child’s blog. It’s difficult for parents to act as partners when we don’t bring them along with us.
I don’t think we should send out a letter now with so little time left in the year. Hopefully we get through this blog project without problem, and we can create the letter for next year.
Blog envy has struck!
Today I shared the blogs with one of our fifth grade classes. As they perused the blogs and left comments, their desire to have blogs of their own was palpable.
Before they visited the blogs, I explained that this was a trial program. I was only working with one class because I needed to figure out how to make it work with a small group before I could try it with an entire grade level. They seemed to accept that, until they started reading the blogs. The usually noisy room was silent as kids immersed themselves in the blogs. Then numerous kids asked me, “Why can’t WE do this?”
I almost laughed out loud when the first one asked. The instant response in my head was, “Because there are only 14 days left of school and it took us that long to get all the permission forms back from the first class.” Fortunately, none of those words came out of my mouth. Instead I hope I was sympathetic.
I had been debating whether or not to share the blogs with the other fifth grade classes. On one hand, I wanted them to see our type of blogs before they stumbled upon the Xanga type — good for them to have a broader blog scheme. I also thought our bloggers would enjoy having kids here at school leave them comments.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to encourage unsupervised comments, since we’ve had problems with inappropriate chat room behavior carrying over into school. Supervised comment sessions would have given us a place to teach appropriate use, but with the classes so busy with end of the year projects, I was afraid we’d be opening a door and then sending them through to wander around unsupervised. I hope my lesson was enough to keep them from the dark side.
Before they started reading the blogs, I discussed the types of comments we were looking to have posted. I also strongly suggested they let me help them edit it since there was no spell checker and what they wrote would be on the internet where anyone could read it.
I don’t know if they put more thought into their comments since they knew there was a real audience, or if this group is skilled at making connections to texts as a result of their book clubs. Whatever the reason, their comments sounded genuine. They connected easily with the blogs and I had to all but drag them out of the lab at the end of class. The next class was waiting outside but these kids wouldn’t log out. Maybe it was part of the blog envy– leaving comments was the next best thing to having a blog of their own.
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