Five weeks into working on the projects, we have students at different stages of work. Most students have their proposals submitted on Google Docs and I have been emphasizing making their proposals very detailed so they can use it as a blueprint for their project. My mantra has been, "Plan your work and work your plan."
This was the first week that I required students to start blogging. I am compiling all the students' blogs on my site under "Student Blog" on the right column of my site. Initially I had students email me their name, period, and the URL of their blogs. That was a bad idea. I quickly changed my method to collect the students' URL by creating a Google Form on my website.
On Blogger, like most publishing sites, you have the option of what text you want displayed on a hyperlink so I included a field for URL and a field for "What is the name of your blog?" so that the link to student blogs wouldn't be a nondescript url.
This made it a lot easier for me/my TA to add them to the Blogger page.
I also did a brief lesson on Internet safety. The main point was not to allow creepers to post on your blog, nor to communicate with them. Once all of my students have their blogs setup, I'll walk them through changing the settings on their blogs so that they can moderate their comments before they get posted. This will allow students to review comments and they can allow or disallow the comment to be on their blog.
Students are excited to peek in on others' projects and I think they're excited to get comments from their peers. The beauty of blogging is that it is outside and not inside. If a student turns in a paper on what they've been doing on their project, I will most likely be the only person to see it.
If some students' blogs begin to get recognized, their blogging will become a conversation with the world outside our school. This is the type of authentic audience I think that our students need in order to get them to begin thinking about what they are producing and what quality it is.
Please peek in on a student's blog and leave a positive comment. I'm sure they would appreciate it a lot.
Starting next week, I'll highlight one person's blog on the main post to help them gain a larger audience.
Until next time.
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