Tech Happy » blogging

Ahh…summer!

azrunner — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:06:25 +0000

Whew! What a year! There were certainly ups and downs in my first year back after my Master’s and a lot of great learning experiences. I’m looking forward to the summer as a chance to implement all the things I learned through the school year-specifically I’ll be writing about here my ideas and hopes for integrating technology more effectively with my students next year. A couple of the primary goals I’ll be working to build on this summer (at least as I see them now)

blogging with students (and/or Voicethread)
further integration of the Smartboard
use of googleEarth
digital presentations

I know these are pretty broad, but these are things I feel we can really do with the available technology at the school. Along with more websites I’ll be posting my ideas on those goals through the summer.

Day 1

azrunner — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:20:28 +0000

Whew! After having been away from the classroom for two years, I’d forgotten how much a school day can do in your brain…I have a mish-mash of names, faces, things to do, things I forgot to do, and things I want to do all running around my brain at once. After finally overcoming an incredibly slow laptop and a TV missing some channels (namely the one with announcement on it) things finally started rolling a little bit. I did get a mini-lesson on the value of covering less material in depth…in many ways it felt like my first day teaching as opposed to my eighth first day. However, I am excited about the possibilities. I have a great group of students and can’t wait to get them blogging, filming, and talking about their experiences and ideas. There is a huge amount of potential and I hope I can tap into it.

I am still looking for others to communicate with, and any suggestions for blog services (I have over 120 7th graders) are welcome…

Learn well!

Blogging With 100’s

azrunner — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:12:30 +0000

Ok, now that I’ve got the job comes the real work. One of the things I’m trying to sort out right now is just how to set up blogging (which I want my students doing) for over a 100 students-actually about 150. I want them blogging about the investigations we do in class as a way of reflecting and communicating as well as responding to various questions, articles, and so on. My biggest question is this: individual blogs or a big blog that all can write to? I’m also contemplating middle ground solutions, i.e. setting up a blog for each class that they can write to or creating blog groups so they are only sharing the blog with 3 or 4 other students. While ideally I’d like them each to have their own I haven’t found a good way of managing that as yet (or even offering it). 21classes has come the closest, offering 50 student blogs with my account, but I would need 3 or 4 of those to cover all my students. And while one blog would be easier to manage, one blog for 150 authors doesn’t seem sufficient. There are a variety of options for the middle ground, but if anyone has any ideas/feedback on how blogging has worked best for them with their students-feel free to chime in!

Learn well!