Complex Blogging

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson discusses the levels of blogging - from posting but not blogging to complex blogging. Richardson defines complex blogging as " extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links, and comments" (Richardson, 2009, 31). He distinctly define the posting of assignments, links, and journaling without analysis and synthesis as posting rather than true blogging (Richardson, 2009).

Getting elementary students to the point where they can post work that analyzes and synthesizes information will take modeling and scaffolding from the teacher. The teacher will need to provide the students with prompts and questions that promote critical thinking and go beyond the journaling or describing of events and material (Richardson, 2009).

I believe this is where the strict guidelines and expectations advocated by Rick Ferdig will become important. Students will need to know that you expect more than just journaling or summarizing. This can be expressed through the modeling of evaluating blog entries using a rubric that places value on analysis, synthesis, hyperlinks, discussion, and thoughtful arguments.

With well designed prompts and assignments that have clearly stated expectations and guidelines, I believe elementary students can create blogs that analyze and synthesize information over an extended period of time.

You can find more of Will Richardson's thoughts on his blog: Weblogg-ed. He also shares his thoughts and ideas on Twitter.

References:

Richardson, Will. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. California: Corwin Press.

Reading and Writing with Blogs

"Perhaps that most significant instructional potential of blogs is student engagement." (Bull and Kajder, 2003, 35)

Glen Bull and Sarah Kajder wrote an article for Leading and Learning with Technology that explores how blogging can be used to scaffold struggling readers and writers. While the article is aimed towards blogging with struggling students, the benefits and activities discussed can be applied to any students in any classroom.

The article argues that by providing a multi-genre, multimedia workspace blogs can engage students in writing in ways that paper and pens cannot (Bull and Kajder, 2003). The article lists that following benefits of blogging:

• Economy - blog entries must be written well to be concise and readable by the viewer.
• Archiving - the archiving of the blog entries allows students and viewers to see the progression of thought and progress
• Feedback - viewers provide feedback for student work; the audience is authentic and, thus, motivates the students
• Multimedia - students can post various types of work to blogs - text, links, photos, digital stories, music, artwork - the possibilities are endless
• Immediacy - the publishing of the entry is immediate and the students see the outcome of their work
• Active Participation- not only is the student participating on their blog but they can also leave comments on their peers' blogs and participate in the larger blogging community (Bull and Kajder, 2003)

In addition to listing the benefits of blogging, the article goes on to discuss potential uses for blogs in the classroom. While it discuss many different activities that span many subjects, the activities that interested me the most were:

• Exploding Sentences - students revise sentences from previous posts (theirs and their classmates) and add rich descriptive words and details. I think this is a great writing activity that helps teach vocabulary and complex sentence structure.
• Literature Circle Discussions - takes the in class literature circle discussions and continues them in the blogsaphere. This activity would give students more time to discuss books and their characters. It would also allow for the potential for literature circle to span beyond the classroom to include multiple classes at multiple schools.
• Photoblogs - students writing captions for photographs. This would be a great way to incorporate art and photography in the language arts classroom. In addtion, it lets students practice summarizing and capturing thoughts into concise sentences.

While I though this article gave some great benefits and ideas for blogging in the classroom, I would have liked links to examples of the activities being used in the classroom. This would have given me a better idea of the acticity and a person to connect with to ask questions and find out more information on specific activities.

References:

Bull, G. and Kajder, S. (2003). Scaffolding for struggling students: Reading and writing with blogs. Leading and Learning with Technology, 31(2). Retrieved from http://itlab.coe.wayne.edu/jalshaibani/docs/reading%20writing%20blogs.pdf

Podcasting

Mr. Williamson's Science Blog introduced me to student created podcasts. I started thinking about all the amazing opportunities that podcasting could bring the classroom. I started my research on podcasting over at the Teach Web 2.0 wiki. I learned about the basics from the CommonCraft Vodcast on podcasting.

Next I tried my hand at podcasting. I started by creating an audio tour for the museum my husband and I would be visiting that weekend. The first step was researching the museum and artifacts on display. Next I selected the ones most interesting to me and did additional research on piece. I choose Garage Band to create my audio track, recording the information I had prepared through my research. It was easy to add tracks and images to audio recording. Finally, I published the track iTunes and had create my first podcast. It was so simple I have created half a dozen since for upcoming attractions we will be visiting.

Now that I knew how to create a podcast, the step was learning about ways to incorporate podcasting into the curriculum. This past weekend Classroom 2.0 LIVE hosted a webinar on Podcasting featuring Kevin Honeycutt. This isn't one of their better webinars; skip the first 30 minutes and then dive in. Kevin makes the point that "writing is a social media". Writing is to be read, but in most of our classrooms no one is reading our students' work. Podcasting can change this. The researching, writing, and editing process stays the same, but the end product is published to share with an authentic audience. The audience can be a sister classroom(s), parents, peers, other teachers, friends - the list is endless. The authentic audience creates a higher stake for the students - there is added motivation to write and succeed.

The webinar also discusses ways to effectively set-up podcasting in the classroom, saftey issues, and resouces for creating and publishing podcasts.

I can't wait to find ways to incorporate this into my classroom!

Have your students create podcasts in your class?

What tools did your students use to create the podcasts?

How did you publish the podcasts?

References:

Honeycutt, Keven. (2009, March 21). Podcasting. Classroom 2.0 LIVE Podcast. Podcast retrived from http://live.classroom20.com/1/post/2009/03/podcasting-podstock-and-ning-special-guest-kevin-honeycutt.html