In this post by Ms. Silvia Tolisano, Ms. Tolisano and her friend Andrea Hernandez discuss the possibilities children have with blogging. They describes blogging for students as a platform where they can talk to the world. They also said that their success depends on how open the platform is and how connected the teacher is. For the students to have a global audience, the teacher has to be connected. Students will get visitors to their blog by being invited in. The teacher must give them the opportunities. They discuss quad-blogging, which is where the teacher connects her/his class to three other classes. One class writes the blog for a week and the other three classes are their to read and comment on the blog post. Each class will take turns being the writers. The idea behind this is to see if quad-blogging will improve the quality of the writing from the students. They were able to use students from around the world.
If also gives students the chance to understand why someone has chosen to write something. Students write differently for teachers. What is the purpose of this writing? This also helps with the writing process because you get to edit and revise the writings as well. The possibilities for positive feedback, communication with a real audience, and conversation, is there as well. Blogs also give the students a chance to show their creative side. Each child’s blog is different. Students are able to learn by reflecting on the experience of blogging.
In the blog post, “documenting for Learning”, Ms.Tolisano describes how documentation can help the teacher, the student, and schools/districts. It helps teachers to reflect on their own work, help students learn outside of class, present their teaching portfolio, and evaluate the students’ progress. It helps students know their progress as well. It also helps students build their footprint in a digital world. It helps parents know what their child is learning and if they need additional help. It can also help each school and district with marketing efforts, or in finding potential employees. There are some great tools for documentation:
* Videos
* Photos
* Blogs
* Notes
* Tweets
I never stopped to think how important documentation is in schools. But in order to see progress you have to start from somewhere and document the journey.
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