The last few months I have been taking a course through Athabasca University called EDPY 480: Learning with Technology. It has been a lot of work, but amazingly valuable for me as an educator who strives to stay current and on top of Ed Tech. The course focuses on using technology to make learning more meaningful and authentic for students, which is a goal all teachers should be striving for! I don't ever want to hear my students ask: "Why do we have to learn this?"
I identified an area that my students struggle with, and chose Functional Writing. I wanted to design some lessons that would make this type of writing meaningful for my students, while teaching them to use technology that could be transferred to other activities. I teach a grade 2 class of around 20 students. Most students at our school would be familiar with technology such as computers, iPads or tablets, and may even have experience with social media. We have inclusive classrooms at our school, so students of all levels and abilities are together in the general classroom setting. Reading and writing are at varied levels at the beginning of the school year, with some students reading and writing well, and some very little. Using technology to read and write for a real purpose can help develop these important skills in my students.
ENTER DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS!
In her eBook Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades, Kathy Cassidy states that a “digital portfolio is richer in content, more comprehensive and much more revealing of the student's progress over time” (p. 64) than a paper portfolio. As soon as I began my research into creating student blogs, Kathy Cassidy's sites kept showing up on all the "Best of" lists! She is a Grade 1 teacher in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (right near my hometown!) and, quite frankly, she is amazing! She is an Apple Distinguished Educator, and has a hugely popular class blog, as well as her professional blog Primary Preoccupation and a group blog at Powerful Learning Practice. It was through her book that I developed my rationale for creating Digital Portfolios with my students this year! The world that my 7-year-olds will live in as adults is a hyper-connected one. Already my daughter feels like the dances she makes up aren't "real" unless they are on YouTube. Kids email their grandparents, not write letters. The internet puts all information right at their fingertips, if only they know how to find it! Learning how to be a part of the online world, in a responsible, safe, and interesting way, is an essential skill for this generation! As I was working on this blog post, I was listening to Ep 50 What are the Benefits of Student Blogging at TeachThought. It really helped solidify my own reasons for doing this! Students in this generation are going to have an online presence. That is simply inevitable. So doesn't it only make sense that we as teachers show them how to do it well? Lastly, back to my original learning problem, it is a type of Functional Writing that is likely the one they will use the most in their lives.
Another benefit of a class blog and digital portfolios is that parents can keep up to date on their child’s progress as well as what is going on in our classroom. Students have a record of how far they have come over the course of the year, and I can use it to assess their progress as well. Win win win!
Okay, so you are thinking... "This sounds cool, but how do I get started?"
First, I chose a blogging platform. I chose Edublogs because right away it seemed versatile and easy to use. Edublogs is powered by Wordpress, but is geared towards teachers and schools. This means that it has features that I was looking for in a class blog, such as ability to create a class list and student blogs tied to the main site, ability to monitor student activity as well as moderate comments. This is important, because I don't want to have to worry about inappropriate content on a class blog. I have had a class website on Weebly for years, so I am not entirely new to the process of creating a website. Creating one on Edublogs was super easy! Check out my video below for instructions.
The next step is to create a few pages on your class blog. The ones I have are:
- Home (this is a default page on the menu)
- About 2C
- Contact us
- Blogging Guidelines
- How to Comment
I would definitely recommend having at least a Contact page, if nothing else. The rest is information for parents or other visitors, and also stuff I will be talking to the kids about as far as appropriate online identities and so on.
Here is where I describe how to create Pages, including a Contact form:
Lastly, I adjusted the settings a bit. At my school, having an online presence is still very new. We have social media, but last year was the first year it was well used. Parents are still a bit skittish about having their kids online, and understandable so. Last year 1/8 of my students were not permitted to even be photographed. So I want to ease our community of parents into it, with strict privacy settings. As they see how valuable the process of having an authentic audience for their children, and see how safe the student and class blogs really are, I am hoping the audience can be wider for my students. But for now, we will not be "blasting pics of the kids all over the inter-web" as one parent once said to me. :)
Watch this video to see the few changes to privacy settings I made, as well as how to create a student blog.
In my next post, I will be sharing my lesson plan on creating an Autobiographical statement for students to use on their About Me page on their Student Blogs!
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