I'm taking a new plunge for my classroom and thanks to three special students, I am able to get these iPods up and running. Through a grant I received from the Blue Valley Foundation, I was able to purchase 2 iPods and wanted to use them to expand the storytelling capacity of my classroom. Inspired by reading Wes Fryer's blog and Kevin Honeycutt's blog, I've been saving up energy to try out this new kind of tool.
There's so much to learn, so much to decide and then put into action I've just been overwhelmed. So I've been concentrating on blogging until now. I had used the iPods to capture interviews with people for storytelling projects that I mostly constructed on the computer. With a little over a month left in the school year, I decided I should really get going at thinking about the iPods as more than file storage.
I thought I'd share about my process only because I couldn't find anyone who said much about it online. I had to cobble together different resources in order to get going.
Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand website was a lifesaver to help me figure out how to get an iTunes account setup without having to use a credit card. There are tons of other things to learn here and loads of ideas.
I searched high and low to find a good list of apps to use with middle schoolers. There are tons of "the hottest" apps articles. Don't need those. I just need no cost, workhorses. Very different from "hottest". Here's the find of hours and hours of searching for me. I couldn't find much info from this wiki, but their recommendations are top in my book. It's called HCTechCoach.
I was disappointed that Apple, Apple's forum, the Distinguished Educator's pages didn't have more ideas. But maybe iTouches are too old school and using just a couple isn't big enough scale. If you know where to look for smaller scale application ideas, let me know. Please. At this point, I wouldn't waste my time looking there because I spent hours looking for ideas and never found anything that was helpful.
I'll keep coming back to update my list...expect this post to keep changing it's content. Hopefully that will help someone in the future who is trying to get their iPods up and working. If you are already good at this and have something I should be seeing, leave me a comment and I would be very grateful. Thanks.
Look at these faces!!! Do they look like they are happy? I just love the expressions of exasperation. Mrs. Yollis played a lifelong lesson of how it feels to have your work credited it someone else.....making the lesson of copyright attribution real to these adorable 2nd graders.
Here's what she did. She took their artwork and intentionally mixed up the names of the artwork so that no one's name was on the right piece. Clearly students didn't like that their work was being attributed to another student...and then the lesson of why they needed to give attribution to somone's photo or words meaning.
Take a second and visit Mrs. Yollis' blog to watch the video clip. I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've seen. It's inspired me to pull a similar experience on my students.....and then I plan on trying to pull off a "Mrs. Yollis's class" on my own students. We learned to write high quality comments from these kiddos and we've been hard at work to put those lessons into practice. and now we're going to learn another brilliantly simple but powerful online learning lesson from them.
So I think you'll want to to bookmark it and share it with your students. Or take the challenge and have you own Mrs. Yollis moment and share it with others!!! Keep coming back because I plan on taking my own pics and sharing it with everyone to show how much they've learned.
Thanks Mrs. Yollis and her students. You're #1 in my book.
And you help illustrate the point that we're all smarter when we share and work together for the benefit of our students.
Does it get to the heart of what teaching should be about when it's working at its very best?
I sure think so.
So much energy is focused around testing right now. Are you for testing....are you against it? Where do you stand? Frankly it just makes me worn out. I'm not for or against almost anything. I'm just for a little dab of this and a little dab of that....figuring out what it is that the student standing right in front of me right now needs, getting that in place...and getting them charged up to learn.
If you don't understand how you can balance test prep and making learning relevant to students...you should take 5 minutes to read this article. Sheryl makes it crystal clear how to see that vision for your classroom.
It's something that I've been advocating ever since I have had the pleasure (said through a force smile and gritted teeth to some extent) of being a math teacher. Here's why. Lots of the middle school students that I teach already believe a) they're bad at math; b) that they're math disabled because "my mom says she was so I probably will be"; or c) math is boring. So you're fighting an uphill battle from the get-go. Pile on the pressure of having everyone being proficient at these goofy high stakes tests....and it's nothing but a prescription for stressed out kids, lots of anxiety and not liking math even more.
So I will have none of that please!!! You can become a fabulous young mathematician if someone will just build stories that compel you to use math to answer the qeustions that revolve around those stories. Or you ask them to construct their own stories. Honestly....when you get down to thinking about how you use math as adult it is rarely on worksheet and it is so many times more around some "story" in your life you have to solve. How much paint do you need to re-do your bedroom? How many packages of hotdog buns are you going to have to buy to make sure everyone has a bun when the buns come in one "denomination" and the dogs in "another denomination"? translation: there are 12 buns per package but you only get 10 dogs per package....dilemma!!!!
And then goodness knows...you would never want to ask students to write, solve and teach their own story problems. Want to see how a teacher is blending writing (gasp) and students writing their own problems.....check out the gummy bears problems!!! They even let you pick the method by which you can solve the problem. Know how I found these problems? One of my student bloggers asked me, "Hey Mrs. Ratzel, I like what we blog about but did you know that Mr. Miller's class blogs about their math problems? Can we do that? I think that would be really cool and maybe other people would like to solve problems we would write."
Once I closed my mouth, I told him I thought it would be a great idea and would put it on our future topics list. When have you ever heard of a student that wants to write about math and/or solve story problems?????
It makes me go back and reflect on the learning students did with me when we were examining the earthquake and tsnuami in Japan. Students asked if they could present their work in a way they thought showed the idea most impactfully. So I gave them the green light. I wasn't exactly sure how I'd do the logistics of receiving all these varied inputs, but I set up a posterous account where they could upload their work because it takes a bunch of types. Soon we had a place to put all our learning called "You won't believe what's happening in Japan".
From these facts, students wanted to know what we'd do if something like this hit our area which begged the question, are we threatened by earthquakes and tsunamis in the middle of the USA? Turns out that, while tsunamis pose no threats the New Madrid fault in eastern Missouri is one of the two most dangerous faults in the whole country. To our good fortune, one of my student's dads is a risk management expert in this very field, and he agreed to come in and speak to our students about what does a business and/or a community to prepare. The kids loved talking with him and seemed so re-assured to hear what he had to say.
The next weekend the tornadoes ravaged North Carolina and all they wanted to talk about was how this WAS a relevant problem for us....we live in Kansas after all. You remember Tornado Alley!!!!
Since I teach in a middle school, I knew I had an 8th grade who had been one of those tornado experts and knew everything there was to know. He agreed to come in and speak to our kids about tornadoes and his teachers let him out of class to present. He was funny, direct and told them more than I could have ever had them listen to and absorb. How wonderful it was to utilize his expertise!!!! and to model for my 6th graders that they could be an in-house expert at some point.
Where do their interests take us now? Funny you should wonder that.....because I typically do some kind of family disaster planning exercise in the spring. Now I just have to sort of connect what Mr. Fennell spoke about and get them to personalize and "wonder" what they should do.
Sheryl says it much more elegantly than I. But I think we're on the same page because I just believe in getting kids to see the relevance in what we learn. It's more than a textbook about earth science. It's the WORLD. And it's how they might need to live. Yes we read the textbook and yes I make sure we cover all the curriculum standards. Yes I make sure that they'll test well when they take the state's yearly test. But we cover the standards as the current events of the day drives the curriculum there....
because I trust that since I teach earth science, the earth will take care of everything in my pacing chart!!!! And the kids will love it and they'll remember things long after the test is over because it came from their need to know. Could I have mapped out Japan's earthquake would take us to tornadoes to personal home disaster plans to a dad speaking to us about threat assessments and risk planning. No. But somehow it works out every year. 'Nuff said.
Several of my students have started playing this online game. The idea is that an environmental disaster has happened and somehow the players in the game will have to help put all the clues together to figure out what's happened. This game has been created by a team of educational research scientists at MIT thru the Smithsonian Musuem. So all the people involved in this really want science to be something that kids enjoy AND learn from using. It's such a cool idea and I thought I set them up to be successful. We kicked it off and I helped them get started. But.....well, it's just not going to be enough help.
My 6th graders aren't getting it.
They love the idea. But they don't love the game.
They don't get it.
Last week and again this week, students are collecting digital samples of blooming trees and shrubs to see if there's been some kind of shift in when they bloom. The briefing seems to indicate that the temperatures are much different than they were and that somehow all the plants and animals are behaving differently now than they were....blooming at different times.
So kids have been asking to go out and take pictures of the redbuds are just stunning around my house right now. They upload these images onto their account and somehow, and they're still a little confused about how this works, they'll be comparing their data with other people. I think they're going to have opportunities to interact with scientists who will help them interpret the data and try to come to some conclusions.
Honestly....this game is way above the heads of my 6th graders. Had I known what I know now, I would have done this as a whole class activity. I think I could have helped out enough to make it fun for them. Mostly they're confused and totally mystified as to what to do next.
I'm not sure if the game designers were aiming for the lower end of the age group they specified or if they wanted only really smart, highly motivated geekie kids to play. But the average kid in my classroom can't do this on their own. I'm going to try a couple of strategies next week to try and help the kids out....I've culled out a small group of pretty interested science kiddos to work on their projects a couple days a week during class time. I'm doing this by compacting their regular curriculum...and the bummer of it...is that I don't have computers to give them access where I am located. So I'm sending them all the way across the building to where there are computers and an adult that can supervise to work on this. I may try and con our Assistant Principal to work with them (he's a former science teacher) and maybe get some help for them that way. I'm also going to work with the other three kiddos that were brave enough to try this on their own in class...I'm not sure how that will go because I really don't have computer access, but we'll see if I can bring in my home computer.
Do you like the trees at our school? Over the weekend, students are going to use field manuals I got for them to find out what kinds of trees they are. One of my students is then going to call the city's park department and check to see if we correctly identified them...then another student is going to upload these into her gallery. I know it's not the intent of the game for us to work together, but I see this as a modification that will make it possible for them to play and not to be too frustrated.
Did you see the cool map at the top of this post? The designers have incorporated these into the game and they are super helpful to the kids. I've worked on finding a way to print them out and post them above our class computer at the back of the room. I "catch" kids pointing and talking about what things mean on them. If the intent was to generate thinking, then I think they've worked pretty well. I wonder if there's anyway that these could be available as .pdf files so I could download them and print them out in a clearer way next time they do something like this. (Isn't that positive thinking that we'll be able to do it again?) I wish I could do weekly recaps like this!!!
I wonder if people who think about what teachers should do to differentiate learning for their kids ever plan for these kinds of real world challenges. It all sounds so good on paper and in theory...but when the rubber meets the road...implementation is not so smooth. You'd better be a great problem solver or your kids are never going to do much unless you can cobble together an assemblage of this and thats to accomplish what you wanted.
I'm not giving up. The game lasts 8 weeks and it's a way too cool opportunity to miss. So we'll keep on trying and I'll keep on working with them as much as I can. The website suggests that this game is for 10 1/2 year olds thru 14 year old....WOW. Who ever established this age range must have some supercharged 10 1/2 year olds because my newly 12 year olds can't do it on their own.
I was not going to write such negative things because this is a terrific idea. But then I thought I should. How can the inventors ever refine their ideas if the real people playing it don't give them feedback? so please take any negative comments as feedback only..... I would suggest thinking how younger children if you're going to let us play can do it as a small group or as a whole class the next time you do something like this.
Have you read this? If not you should!!!! Immediately without a moment's hesitation. why?
Because it's right now and it's makes sense. If we create reforms based on these simple ideas (and I know they're not new but this is the new lingo and the new take on grassroots), the reforms would be embraced by the people who are actually responsible for implementing them and they'd work. Go back and read the other two articles as well because they're excellent...Diigo them, put them in your Evernote...whatever...just hang onto the ideas because I think they'll be coming up again in the future.
Ms. Steele-Pierce speaks of learning about intentional serendipity. Who knew before I read her article that it's what I believe in too. I didn't have such a cool name for it. So now I have two things I've learned in about 5 minutes that I believe are important in being more articulate about what I believe. I'm actually learning how to be more powerful in speaking about things I already do and already believe in....and now I have words to name those beliefs with. After looking at these slides, it's easy to see the power of this kind of thinking and I'm so gratefully relieved that it's what I've been thinking for a long time.
And from reading these articles, I have a couple of new people with whom I will be very intentional about reading, following and trying to learn from. Isn't that the great fun of the web? Treasure hunting? Hopefully at some point I will have something which to contribute back to them. So it goes with this new virtual world....a place where you can explore and find treasures you didn't know and come back feeling as if you aren't so much of a lone ranger!!!!
I will admit that I grow weary of waiting on other people to change, so I go off on my own and experiment. The kids and I will wonder what would happen if we tried doing it this way......and then we'll try it that way. That really bugs other teachers. They want to know exactly what will happen before they try something. I just see the classroom as a big science experiment and there is a lot of room to see what works best. When I find things that really work well---like my way of teaching nonficiton reading, or how to get better science writing or teaching science from a current events perspective----I don't really find lots of people who want to imitate those innovations. Ms. Steele-Pierce then challenges me when she says.
But you recognize that your change alone doesn’t change your school. You brought your edge experiences back to your staff—where the real change occurs as they move out themselves, and back again.
I realize after reading this that I'm probably stuck out at the edge if I think about change looking similar to what I do in my classroom from only the people with whom I physically work. But I've gone beyond thinking as that as my only group. I feel so much more collegial with people from far and wide....to recycle a phrase I used years ago in one of my first virtual learning networks....birds of feather. I've found fellow flockers.
This year I've worked on projects with buddies from across the district, across the country and even across the world. My students may not have had the chance to switch rooms and/or physical spaces with the other science or social studies class in my building....but they've made connections to students like Teegan, learned how to do things from Abbey an 8th grader in Indiana, or Mr. Miller's class in King City California, or a librarian in a building across the district where I used to work, my virtual buddies in California and North Carolina and even a new student friend YongMinSong who lives in Korea. I've taken the challenge to expand my learning net...and am expanding to work with teams in Australia and El Paso in ways I've never tried before.
So do you have connect back in your f2f environment? I'd say yes and no.
Yes because you do have a responsibility to spread what you've learned to the ones you actually see everyday. If they're willing to participate with you...hey....that's great. Do the best you can there and then go find other ways to return to the core.
And I'd say No. I just think my core may be in a different geographical location that in the room next to mine. I find that definition too constraining...and I'm not even sure that's what the author is saying. But I'd say if the f2f peopls can't, won't, or don't...then do the best you can with the and find your birds of a feather. Let them be your core.
The world has changed. I know...I've got maybe another decade in me before I retire. That's not much time to really figure things out and see how to make things better. I feel like I'm on the cusp of really good stuff with my kids. My work is getting more efficient and effective...kids are more plugged in, learning more and more deeply and they are connecting more with the world. It's working.
I know that push is NOT my way. It's never worked for me....I want to know why too often. Instead of just sitting there and doing what I'm told to do, I want to understand. Just ask my mom, I've apparently been asking why since I was about 2 years old (which wasn't cool in the 1950s). I'm definitely one that sees that pull is a better way and probably why I loved one of my first jobs back in the 1970s as a community health organizer (before I was a teacher and I worked for a local health planning agency in southern California).
Do you wonder if a physical location is too constraining once you start thinking that pull is finding your flock and then getting in the groove?
What do you think? Have I lost my mind......did I fall off the edge and not know it? Maybe you can never go home again once you find your flock.?????
Original image with Attribution license on http://www.flickr.com/photos/pictureperfectpose/81938785/sizes/m/ and then processed in Picnik
Just an update on our efforts...the deception continues. Students are busy answering akadangreen's questions. We're rapidly approaching almost 200 comments.
My favorite interchange was between one of my most reserved students who hardly ever speaks loudly....akadangreen wanted to know about his mineral...lead. Lead you might ask? How did he pick lead? Well, his dad is a radiologist so what other kind of mineral would he pick? Don't you love that? akadangreen asked him how much lead was exported from the US every year!!!!
He looked at me because he had no idea what that even meant. So we talked about what an export was. And then we on a hunt. We tried a bunch of keywords...and pretty soon we had a group of 10 kids standing around trying to thing of synonyms we could use to find data on how much lead the US exports in any year.
Eventually we found it at the USGS...of course students said. We downloaded an insane .pdf chart detailing the export #s for every mineral in the whole US and we followed the list down to lead where we found the 2009 #. (One of the kids asked me if everything was answered at either USGS or NASA or NOAA!!! I guess that tells you a lot about our classroom.) Here's what Nick wrote and posted on the blog about what he did with the number....
In 2009 the US actually produced 82,000 metric tons. This equals 180,800,000 pounds. How I got that answer is 1.808 multiplied by 10 to the eighth power. Your answer from that is the amount of pounds. The computer told me 10^8, then the calculator made it into 180,800,000.
Sources: WolframAlpha.com
The USGS only had metric ton info. That meant we had to have a discussion about the kinds of tons. Which then meant we had to change the metric tons into pounds.
Jokingly I asked him if he could do that conversion. His eyes sort of popped out and then I told him I had no idea how to do it either. But I knew a place that could help us. Wolfram. Oh yeah he said,we've used that before. So off to Wolfram we went where he typed in "How many pounds is 82,000 metric tons?" which came back with
Immediately he whips out a calculator to find out what that looks like. And is able to come up with 180,800,000. I think he was super pleased with himself and actually looked forward to going home and posting this answer to akadangreen.
What a fun couple of days where kids have learned so much about minerals PLUS about a million other things. Who would have thought the ensuing conversation---with all the questions back and forth would keep them wondering, asking and answering.
While I've been using Google docs for quite a while but this week I tried a new assignment with my students and happened (and how I wish I could say that I planned it) on a fabulous ah-ha. Formative assessments are terrific AND the goal should not only be for me to learn something about where the student stands in their learning, but also to give them feedback AND for them to learn something as they complete the assessment. Instead of creating the typical checklist in a wordprocessing format, I created a spreadsheet.
As students completed each task, they entered the required info or a yes/no to indicate where they were on the checklist. They could also enter data into the spreadsheet about the sources of information they were using for their work. That I anticipated and expected to happen. But I was thinking of the document in a more static way....I knew multiple people could edit on it at the same time in Google Docs but I had never actually thought about monitoring their progress as they did it. It was that dynamic quality that allowed me to give the feedback which then resulted in them learning more during the assessment. We didn't have to wait until the next lesson to remediate where they weren't "getting it" and I could draw in an expert "student" to help them get what they needed to know. Right then...on the spot.
Usually I walk around the lab and find that I get pulled into a protracted conversation with someone about doing a particular process...which is fine and OK...except that I don't accomplish what I really need to do which is to keep surveying the whole group and getting everyone moving along.
BUT I had this EUREKA moment when I saw that keeping the Google spreadsheet open gave me that gave me a unique bird's eye vantage point as they did their work and I could also ask questions and ask for clarfication. I was so overwhelmed, that I tried to capture as much of the experience as I could on a Jing screencast to share. I was stationary and staying to my purpose and not being sidetracked. I was still able to direct extra help to the people who needed it but I called on the expertise of my students to meet those needs instead of me!!! instead of cloning myself I figured a way to develop more capacity from students. I've long been a believer in this but I hadn't seen this method for deploying that student expertise before.
I made this on the fly and it is filled with the chatter of the students in the background but I think you'll be able to see what I mean.
I know it's sounds dorky but I was able to help students know exactly what to do and I knew exactly where they stood with getting their blogs up to speed on each of these elements.
I think I hadn't appreciated the dynamic nature of watching the information transform before my eyes. I could see where they were struggling to get something filled it and they were able to see what other students had done to get that part of the assignment finished. This is such a wonderful example of a formative assessment that is outside the box of what most people think of formatives....but it is part of my imagining how formatives can and should be used in the future to help students learn in a powerful, connected future-forward (I hate the term 21st century) way.
Sometimes you're good and find something. Lots of times, you're just lucky and have to be smart enough to see that you've stumbled on something wonderful. I'm lucky!!!! So how cool is that I figured out how to do a formative assessment AND tap into the student expertise of my kids....all just by using a tool that I've used a million times before just not in this way.
Have you discovered anything like this that could be purposed for formative assessments? I just know that there are many, many more possibilities just waiting to be discovered out there.
I watched an amazing thing happen....one of my students was really floundering. He couldn't read or understand the reading material on the mineral---silver. The student sitting next to him suggested that he cut/paste the article's information into Google Translator.
So that's what we did...and the biggest smile erupts across that student's face. He could read and understand everything. It wasn't too hard for him, once he understood what it said about density, hardness, streak color and all the other properties, to translate it from Chinese into English.
Simple solution. But it took a kid to think of it. I'm glad he did.
It's hard to get kids amped up about minerals. Today I had scads of mineral maniacs....They love to read the Basher Books written by Dan Green about lots of different science topics. Today I capitalized on their love and wrote a "fake" post and found a friend who happened to have time to play "Dan Green" (akaDanGreen as her Edublogger username). I set the stage by telling kids that in a new edition of the book, they were several article short and needed our help picking another mineral. So they had to convince him to include their mineral. They vaciliated from believing me and calling my bluff....but the posted their hearts out. Just in case!!!
Urgent Request from Basher Books has racked up 109 comments in just 7 1/2 short hours.(You might have to click on Older Posts to see everything.) Read all about the story I spun for them...and then read thru some of the comments that my teacher friend also know as akaDanGreen posted for them. Man, she was busy writing all these questions and compliments. It will take the kids a couple of days to answer all her questions.
Blogging has never been so fun. I even watched one young man sprint...literally sprint across the lab to get to his computer to see if akaDanGreen responded to his blog post. Now if someone had told me I could get a kid to be THAT excited about writing about a mineral, I would have fallen down laughing. But I saw it with my own eyes. Blogging has that magical touch and if you just go with it a bit....you can (as the teacher) have the time of your life. I had a blast and they wrote and wrote and wrote.
Anja started her post off "Sometimes called the “Queen of Gems”, the opal is a symbol of strong sense of assurance, hope and well-being." telling us everything we'd need to know about opals on this Thursday.
Another one of my less than enthuasiastic science students, ColetheEpic, wrote this "I’m Pyrite and I am pure trickery." Can't you imagine what his post is going to tell you?
Architecture isn't far from Annie's mind as she writes about sandstone, "magine you are sitting in front of the United States capital building, you think, “what is this beautiful structure made out of”? You think and you think, you may not know this but the front is made out of sandstone!"
And there's plenty more plus all the individual bloggers....like
It's Gypsum; not Gypsy. Here you'll hear how Katy know about a mineral used in everything from sculpture to surgery to wallboard.
"Some miner’s risk their lives for it, some buy it as a wedding token for the one they love, some people even kill and steal for it." by Parker.
Aren't I Marbelous? can you guess what Maddie's writing about?? Lest you think it's a frivolous post, Maddie explains what kind of rock marble is and what it's most common use is....and how it's formed from sedimentary limestone.
Teddy takes on the manly approach and wanted to know about the minerals of swords which led him to write Going Chromium, Chrome and Cromite. In his post, he gives us the lowdown on what to use if you're designing the undefeatable sword.
I'm learning more and more about how to harness the fun and power of blogging. I'll post another article soon to give the step-by-step behind the scenes planning that has to go into making this project a success. Let me just tell you that it takes planning two things: the content and the prewriting activity. Both are KEY to making the end result this fun and high quality.
Book image taken from www.basherbooks.com without a doubt, one of my student's most favorite publishers in the whole world.
A friend, Gary Stager, helps all of us in the teaching world by running a blog where he posts Seymour Papert's sayings. Everyday offers somethings that inspires, pushes and shames us into trying harder and trying to think bigger and better.
Here's what he posted today.....
“As long as schools confine the technology to simply improving what they are doing rather than really changing the system, nothing very significant will happen”
Papert, Seymour. (1998). “Technology in schools: to support the system or render it obsolete?” accessed (2004) at The Milken Family Foundation website.
I wish I could claim that I'm really changing the system. The best I can say is that I am aware that improving it isn't enough and I'm doing my best to really change. Probably the place I fail is that I haven't found a way to spread what I do beyond my own room. My little incubator of ideas seems so fragile and specific to me, my teaching style and student population, I don't know how transferrable they are.
Blogging maniacs about minerals---student excel at writing
It's hard to get kids amped up about minerals. Today I had scads of mineral maniacs....They love to read the Basher Books written by Dan Green about lots of different science topics. Today
I capitalized on their love and wrote a "fake" post and found a friend who happened to have time to play "Dan Green" (akaDanGreen as her Edublogger username). I set the stage by telling kids that in a new edition of the book, they were several article short and needed our help picking another mineral. So they had to convince him to include their mineral. They vaciliated from believing me and calling my bluff....but the posted their hearts out. Just in case!!!
Urgent Request from Basher Books has racked up 109 comments in just 7 1/2 short hours.(You might have to click on Older Posts to see everything.) Read all about the story I spun for them...and then read thru some of the comments that my teacher friend also know as akaDanGreen posted for them. Man, she was busy writing all these questions and compliments. It will take the kids a couple of days to answer all her questions.
Blogging has never been so fun. I even watched one young man sprint...literally sprint across the lab to get to his computer to see if akaDanGreen responded to his blog post. Now if someone had told me I could get a kid to be THAT excited about writing about a mineral, I would have fallen down laughing. But I saw it with my own eyes. Blogging has that magical touch and if you just go with it a bit....you can (as the teacher) have the time of your life. I had a blast and they wrote and wrote and wrote.
And there's plenty more plus all the individual bloggers....like
I'm learning more and more about how to harness the fun and power of blogging. I'll post another article soon to give the step-by-step behind the scenes planning that has to go into making this project a success. Let me just tell you that it takes planning two things: the content and the prewriting activity. Both are KEY to making the end result this fun and high quality.
Book image taken from www.basherbooks.com without a doubt, one of my student's most favorite publishers in the whole world.
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