embracing blogging

Below is a comment I left on Tom Barrett's blog in response to his posting of "Do You Have a Class or School Blog." Tom is an amazing educator and willing collaborator from Nottingham, England, and I learn much by what he has put out there. Thanks Tom! His post prompted me to reflect on what we have built at Kimmel Farm in just four months. Honestly, this is the first chance I've had to truly reflect on this now that we've started our holiday break. It truly is amazing now that I think about it. Here's my comment.

One of my "BIG 3 Goals" this year is to integrate blogging as part of the instructional routine at my new school. I was lucky enough to have been offered a job to help open a brand new school after spending over a year building a new mindset and trying to build connected classrooms at my former school.
Opening a new school completely equipped with Activ Boards and other technologies was a daunting task. Access is not an issue here which made the "sell" a bit easier. Furthermore, I have a deep belief that blogging has power in every subject area and every grade level. While our class blogs are in their infancy, the staff embraced my vision for blogging and we now have 21 class blogs setup (linked off our school's main blog) and slowly growing into powerful teaching and reflection tools. There are others who still want to start their blog so that number will grow. We only have around 25 regular classes this year.
My plan is to support and help our teachers at Kimmel Farm Elementary grow their blogs in the coming year and get a handle on just how powerful they can be to support not only writing, but also creative expression in any curricular area through digital media that STUDENTS and TEACHERS create. I'm so proud of the way they've embraced blogging. If you look at the blog list off our school's main blog http://kimmelfarmelem.blogspot.com you'll see they're made an investment in this tool. We used blogger because that's the product our district leaves unfiltered and recommends we implement. The biggest impact is that this is a way to showcase to parents and district leaders what we are doing. More importantly the students are excited to comment and participate in the ongoing discussion. Later, we'll add blogging buddies - hopefully from around the globe.

Here is a quick video with three reasons Tom thinks blogging is important from his post entitled Why Bother Blogging. I think the faculty at Kimmel Farm gets that this has tremendous potential and are now willing to explore these options. For a brand new school that is building culture and community this is a huge step forward. This is one building block for what we can become - perhaps a cornerstone (to borrow the words of Tom Barrett).

Building Blogs

With the first quarter now complete the second leg of the school year is underway. Time passes quickly. Students were home last Thursday and Friday, but teachers were at school working hard to complete report cards, wrap up first quarter data and look at where their classes were headed in the second nine weeks.
Amazingly, many teachers added building their class blog to the to-do list during those teacher work days. We've been talking about the educational impact they can have, and how it's a very connected way to involve students in authentic reflection and writing.
With one workshop offered on Thursday and one on Friday 15 class blogs were created and readied for student use in the second quarter. There are numerous ways these blogs can be used in the classroom and many teachable moments can and should come from teaching students to blog. The On an e-Journey with generation Y blog has a list of 20 reasons why students should blog, and they are all good reasons. I just need one to convince me the work involved with having a class blog is worth it all - authentic expression. Allowing our students to respond says we care about what they think, and that it is important enough to be published.
Students don't reflect enough on what they've been taught or on what questions they still may have after the teaching. Blogging is a way to do that individually, or with a collective voice as a class, and on a platform that invites responses in return. Check out our Blog List on the right side column to visit our classroom blogs. This list is incomplete and will grow - and so will our students.