Today, as I read for one of my current classes, I saw the wide range of uses for blogging. While this school year is pretty well in the bag, no truly new things will be happening from this point on, next year looks to be an interesting one to say the least. I've wanted to have some extra form of interaction with my students for a while and exploit what so many students are using anyway.
I see that starting small will be beneficial and ease the transition to this form of activity and help to figure out the pitfalls, and deal with concerned parents. While I'd like to fully integrate this technology, I'm currently without a Language Arts member to my teaching team. It only makes sense to coordinate this style of activity with the LA department. So for next year I'm looking to incorporate blogging in a limited capacity.
I'll use the "club" time to explore the use of blogging. As of this year, each teacher is expected to facilitate some club during the school day. Once each month the middle school runs a slightly altered bell schedule, during which each class period is shortened by six minutes. Through out the 10 period day, that equals an hour of "club" time. This year I participated in running "Science Club" with the other 8th grade science teacher, which was OK, but didn't really seem to be the most thrilling for the kids.
Next year I was thinking about doing something that involve the team newsletter that I send home for my students. I'd like to get kids involved in researching the topics and assembling the final product. I see that the blogs could just be the ticket for simplifying this. Meeting only once in a month makes for little face to face time, but by utilizing blogs, I think I can make it work.
The tech coordinator will be the first road block, but if I can get through that for a small number of students...the following year I could use this experience to incorporate the use of blogs with all of my students. Using this with a small number will also make it easier to supervise and start to show the issues that I'll face with a large number of students.
I've actually considered making a MySpace page for my class. This idea came after I asked all of my online students to take five minutes from MySpace and instead check out some science pages. Since they use it anyway, why not post some good content in their world? It would also help with the additional interaction that I'm interested in. Whether or not I'll use this idea, I don't know yet.
I need to talk to my principal and get his thoughts. He's pretty darn progressive and is open to lots of ideas. He also seems to see more pitfalls and asks questions that need to be addressed to make things run smoothly. Whether it's blogging, MySpace, or just trying to get access to tech, his input has been valuable on so many other things that I'll start talking to him this coming week to get an idea of how much leeway I may have for this venture. I'll see where I end up. I would imagine that the club idea will be good start to pave the way for further excursions into cyber-space.
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