Final Project

For my final project I have created a sample blog that I will use as an exemplar when I introduce the independent reading project.
I would like to change the way my students keep track of their independent reading, eliminate a lot of paper, expand their reading choices, and allow them to give each other feedback on what they read. I also think it will help more reluctant readers find a greater diversity of reading material. I hope students who have a hard time finding reading material that interests them will be able to get ideas from students with similar tastes and interests.
I'm currently working on samples of the types of posts students can create. Ultimately I would like to grade them on three aspects of this project.

1. The depth, creativity and analysis of their posts.
2. The quality of their comments on their peer's blogs.
3. The way that they link their blog to the web/on-line community.

I teach reading to 8th graders so they would be the guinea pigs for this project. For kids who already enjoy reading, I think this project will allow them to share what they love in a new way and act as a resource for other students. For kids who are less excited about reading I hope this project will introduce them to new reading materials and allow them to find things they're interested in reading. I believe all students will benefit from learning the skills involved in creating a blog.

Check out my Independent Reading Sample Blog here.

Goal Reflection

My goals on Monday were to gain new tools to use with my students and to continue integrating technology in my classroom. These goals are definitely still useful to me as the learning in this area is seemingly endless.

It's Thursday afternoon and my head feels ready to burst. Not in a painful way (yet), but I do feel that I have gained a lot of information in the past 4 days and that information has taken on a life of its own inside my head like a plant spreading its roots through the soil. I know that as children our brains trim down unused cells so that if you stop playing the piano, or speaking French, to a certain extent your brain will cease to use those synapses and dendrites.

In the past four days I feel like I have grown new brain cells (yes, yes I know biologically improbable) and I hope to continue using these skills so that I will deepen and enrich my understanding of how to use these tools in my classroom and in my civilian life.

One of my goals for this next school year will be to make one last concerted effort to get my district to change their filtering system to make it less restrictive. Of the many amazing tools we have learned about, very few will be available to me with our current filter. This makes me incredibly sad.

My top three tools that I'm excited about using with my students (assuming a world with no filter) are blogs, RSS feeds, and google docs and all its fabulous permutations.

RSS in Professional Practice

For me using RSS will require a few filter hurdles. BUT, in a perfect world, I would love to use it to collect my student's blogs in google reader. I would also like to use RSS with my students in the research process. A third use is in my reading class where RSS feeds would provide an excellent source of non-fiction reading materials.

One thing that David Parry touched upon in his article about Blogs for Learning, is the importance of teaching students the difference between reading for quick analysis and slow analysis. I think that skimming, or quick analysis reading is an increasingly important skill in the digital age.

Creating RSS Feeds

I found it very helpful to learn more about RSS feeds, particularly the steps involved to create my own RSS searches. It really takes the whole thing to a new level. This will be potentially very useful for students doing research projects.

This is a feed I created to draw information from google about nasa and the planets to my igoogle page. This feed can be found on my personal igoogle page where I think I will be more likely to look at it. It's crazy going back and forth between google accounts!
http://news.google.com/?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en

Ideas for a Final Project

This year in my reading class students created a noteshare notebook where they kept track and reflected on a variety of non-fiction readings. These readings came from on-line articles, magazines, textbooks, and newspapers. Students seemed to enjoy choosing their own readings and templates for reflection. I would like to expand this project by having students create a blog where they keep track of all their independent reading assignments. I usually assign 6 or 7 novels per year in addition to the non-fiction readings.

Blog entries related to the novels might include reflections on their reading, vocabulary words, links to related current events or related novels, or links to personal experiences. Photos and video could definitely be incorporated.

In order to monitor their blog reading, students would link blogs that they follow to their own blog. They would also be responsible for making posts about the blogs they read and linking to those blogs.

I wonder if I could create a blog template, or create a sample blog about a class novel that we have all read and include some posts about the blogs I read. This might be a good way to kick off the assignment.

A Tale of Two Blogs

The first of the must read blogs that I perused is called Extreme Biology. This is a class blog where the students contribute as frequently (if not more so) than the teacher. The student's postings usually include a photo and an explanation of an interesting study or current event related to all things science. Many of the posts ended with an invitation for other students to take their poll or answer a question to continue the dialogue. This struck me as a great venue for all of those interesting (but somewhat off-topic) questions that we often don't have time for in science class.

In my classroom I do something on Fridays called Science in the News. This is a time when I share current events related to science. We take some time to discuss these topics and how they relate to what we're doing in class. I would love to turn this over to students who could post the current events and then give class time for students to read and comment. This seems like a simple and straightforward way to use blogging in a science classroom.

The second must read blog I checked out is called 2 Cents Worth. The first thing that caught my eye is that it's a wordpress blog. I'm very interested in learning about these for personal use. This is the blog of a non-traditional educator blogging about technology and education. I was initially interested in the blog because the posts were relatively short compared to some of the other ones I looked at. In all the blogs I read I find I tend to prefer shorter blog entries that get right to the point. I can do without a lot of musing and whining. I was especially interested in the article that was about school filters and how they're hamstringing educators. I bookmarked the article and plan to read it. At the end of the day I would rather read Richard Byrne's technology education blog. I find it's a bit more short and sweet.

Group Work Survey