Ms. Cassidy is a first grade teacher in Canada and she uses her classroom blog in a variety of ways for both parents and students. On her blog, parents can get a daily update about their students' progress and see what exactly they are doing within the classroom. Ms. Cassidy also frequently posts unidentified pictures and videos of her students engaging in lessons so that parents can again see their learning in action.
Ms. Cassidy also uses her blog as a place where each of her first grade students has his/her own blog page. Each student has his/her own page where his/her work is displayed for anyone to see and comment on. The parents and relatives of these students often will leave comments for their children on their blog page, which the children can then read and respond to with Ms. Cassidy's help.
I love this idea of giving each of her students his/her own blog page for a variety of reasons. First, it gives the students a meaningful sense of purpose for writing and learning. Secondly, they have an authentic audience with whom they can communicate and publish their work for. In addition, each of their blog pages gives the students choice and ownership over something. Lastly, I love how friends and family can post encouraging comments on each student's blog. All of these reasons are motivating factors for any student, and I love how Ms. Cassidy has sparked this excitement for learning within her first graders by allowing them to incorporate 21st century technology into their learning.
Thank you for sharing this JoEllen! I feel like we so often talk about how we would hypothetically incorporate some of this technology into our future classrooms -- It's definitely encouraging to see an authentic, functioning example. I took some time to explore Ms. Cassidy's blog and I think it is great! I think it serves as a true example of the direction that education is going and how we can use technology to give parents a direct connection to their child's learning. I also saw that Ms. Cassidy has a twitter account for the classroom. I think this is a great idea as well, so that parents can get quick updates about their child's class via their twitter feed.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that many of her posts on the main page are brief and include a picture. However, it must take some significant time to maintain the students' individual pages. That would be my only concern with maintaining a page like this, is the teacher prep time that is involved. I think it is much more doable at the elementary level, since there are fewer students to account for, but even so I would be worried about keeping it up-to-date! Maybe using a blog like this in place of a formal classroom website could be a solution to reducing teacher prep time.
Also, I think a blog similar to this would be a great tool for ESOL teachers to connect parents who might not be proficient in English to their child's classroom. I know we talked about this in TSL 611 recently, regarding ways to include parents in their children's learning in a culturally responsive way. I think this could be a great solution and can see myself making use of a blog like this as an ESOL teacher. What do you think?