Trying It Out!

After weeks of reading about blogs, I am ready to give it a shot. My long term plan is to incorporate a blogging component in all of my middle school classes next year and introduce blogging on a smaller scale in my third and fourth grade classes.

However, rather than wait until next year to experiment with the tool, I have decided to give it a trial run now by introducing a small blogging activity in one of my middle school classes. I'm hoping that by doing this, I will get a better feel for the site I have decided to use with my students, while learning, first hand, what blog topics, requirements, and assessments best meet the needs of my class.

Here's what I have done so far:

• Verified that my school's Acceptable Use Policy includes publishing students' work on the web
• Notified my department head and the school's curriculum and technology specialist of my intention to introduce a blogging activity in one of my middle school classes/provided them with the name of the site we will be using
• Registered on 21 Classes
• Began inputting students' names

Here's what I still need to do:

• Post a message on my Edline page informing parents of the activity and explaining how students' privacy will be protected
• Become familiar with the site and post relevant and/or necessary information
• Decide on a topic for the activity
• Find and list examples of good blogs to share and discuss with students
• Decide on number of posts and comments required of students

Even as I write out my "to-do list", I can see how it's easy to start thinking too big. I'm going to need to keep reminding myself to begin small, as Will Richardson suggests in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. This is what I envision right now: 1) Students read blogs written by other people and discuss what they like (or don't like) about them, 2) I make some initial posts on our class blog and have students respond to them, 3) Students create their own simple blogs (ex: share a link and provide a brief explanation as to why they included it), 4) Students create longer blogs where they expand and reflect on their thoughts, 5) Students participate in blog conversations by commenting on their classmates' posts.

There are five more weeks of school left, and the truth is, I'm not sure how far my students will be able to get in the blogging activity. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to trying it out. After all, no matter how it turns out, it will provide valuable information for me to use when I begin planning for next year.