A student that was in our class last year left this comment on one of my current student’s blog posts today:

Nice blog!!!! Tell Mr. Crosby to put me back on the blog, please!!!!!

Learning is messy!

Tags: Blogging

As happens multiple times on Twitter each day someone needed some help and the following request was “Tweeted”:

I thought of an example and sent the link, as did others, but soon 2 clarification “Twits” appeared:

And:

BTW – my first thought was actually … Wow! .. how many students K-12 does this describe? I hope more than I think!

I immediately realized the example I had sent was absolutely nothing like what was actually required. In addition, I knew we had no examples that fit that description … but I sure wish we did!

That description is where I want my students to be, but we are not there yet. I mentioned this very thing in my K12 Online Keynote … and this Twittered request was a kick in the pants to remind me where we are going. So why aren’t we there yet?

Lots of groundwork has been necessary to make my students proficient at the nuts and bolts of not only publishing on a blog, but all the care and editing it takes to prepare a writing piece for publishing. The good news is we have come a looooong way.

Second, whether I agree with it or not, one of the hurdles we have had to clear is that our blogging is supposed to prove its worth by improving our writing test scores (fifth grade is the only grade that takes this test in elementary, and our entire school is judged by how our fifth graders do). I suspect it will help, but that has meant that up to this point in the year (we took the writing test last week) our focus has been preparing for that test … which has not been all bad.

One of our biggest weaknesses has been caring enough to really do our best. We have learned multiple proofreading strategies, worked very hard on proper English, “showing not telling”, how to check spelling with a dictionary that cannot have any example sentences that show the meaning of the word in the sentence (we used “spell check” sparingly the last 2 weeks because I wanted them to be used to checking spelling other ways) and wrote and wrote and wrote.

Blogging and commenting consistently has really impacted that “wanting to do quality work” part, and I see that only getting better. The writing test is always a narrative piece so we have only been writing narrative pieces for the most part.

But now the test is over. We have the rest of this year and their 6th grade year to start embedding blogging into the curriculum in more significant ways. Now ALL I have to do is be the teacher that can help my students become: “… a student who is reading, writing, linking back to reading, reflecting, synthesizing, understanding how blogging connects.” I love a challenge!

Learning is messy!!!

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Tags: Twitter, 5th grade writing test, blogging

My 5th graders started 2 blog posts last week … and another this week … that because of the 5th grade writing test and other time consumers they hadn’t had time to post.  So we had a bit of time yesterday and more today … and before I knew it  there were over 80 posts waiting for approval (from 26 bloggers). On top of that some of our blogging friends up in Saskatchewan, Canada, made close to 20 comments. So now that we’ve written and posted a bunch we have a change of pace and get to read others blogs and leave comments.

For those of you that don’t have your students blogging and are on the fence about getting started … this is ONE of the pieces that I’ve found makes blogging so valuable (other teachers that have your students blogging please leave your experiences in comments). Its not just one activity or one kind of writing. Students write their own posts on topics the teacher assigns based on any curriculum area you can think of … or creative writing (including poetry, tall tales … whatever you can imagine), or students just writing about anything they want. Then they receive comments to read … some from classmates and others from students and teachers from around the world. Then they want to read the blogs of their commenter (so they are reading more by choice) and they actually notice and discuss others writing savvy and pick up ideas and skills from them.

I mentioned not long ago that as motivated as my students have been that they would “hit the wall” and get tired of it. Besides our blogging we have been writing scripts for a video we are producing (about blogging BTW) and the aforementioned 3 days of the writing test. When I explained this afternoon that I was giving them time to get caught up on their blogs they jumped right in. When they were done they had a choice of doing several online game sites they love and I had 2 students come and explain that they were done with the 2 assigned posts, could they write a new one about our photo shoot last week. Its the gift that just keeps on giving.

Now if you read this blog much you are probably saying about now … “well yeah, but your kids all have their own laptop … no one has to wait a turn or wait until you go to the lab … they have constant access.”

That’s right, and that’s the point. My students have access and our computers aren’t collecting any dust. We aren’t moaning about lack of software to run, or outdated software, or whatever. Blogging is an activity that promotes and utilizes authentic audience, doing real work that has meaning and purpose, is archived and editable as students acquire skills and wish to make improvements … and is accessible to their families and friends wherever they live. And we haven’t even mentioned wikis, photo projects, podcasts, Skype, and all the other web 2.0 goodies that are also free or very low cost.

Learning is messy!

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Tags: studentblog, blogging,

Found this quote from Martin Luther (here).

Made me think of what some have said of blogging. Andrew Keen could have used this quote by simply replacing “books” with blogs or the internet in his book The Cult of the Amateur.

Luther has been proven wrong in this instance … I suspect Keen will also. Ya think?

Learning is messy!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: blogging, Cult of the Amateur, Martin Luther

Yesterday I mentioned that my 5th graders would blog today … or at least begin the process, about our Thanksgiving Feast experience. Based on how we have done so far this year I figured that 2 to maybe 8 or 9 students might manage to write, edit, and be ready to post today. Well, I was wrong. My students are doing so much better with using correct English and punctuation that almost all of them managed to finish and post today … I was blown away, and I told them so.

Now as I have mentioned recently you would probably not look at the archive of work of many students in my class and see a huge transformation in their writing, but they get to a “reasonable” finished product so much faster now … fewer mistakes during their rough draft, better at finding mistakes and able to inject a bit more feeling and description is what I note.

Now that they have a better handle on the “nuts and bolts” I can start the process of having them inject more voice and polish into their writing (I hope). I also hope to begin to show them how to have more of a conversation on their blogs. More writing about their learning and commenting back and forth … as I mentioned in my K12 Online Keynote that is when I believe blogging will really achieve its power in learning.

One other quick note … we have been blogging a lot, almost every day – sometimes for 1 to 2 hours at a stretch … and they stay on task, they don’t moan when I say we are going to work on our blogs today. I had a student today … a student that is very ESL (second language learner) that struggles with correct English and syntax … got his post done today btw … and when he finished, and he had to work at it a bit but has improved so much … he asked if he could finish editing last weeks post that he didn’t get to finish instead of doing a Funbrain activity others were doing.

Learning is messy!

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I was realizing the other day that last year my class didn’t begin to blog until the end of January. About half of my current class of 27 were in my class then so no one has blogged for a year, and half have blogged for about 2 months. Even in that short time my students have built an archive of work that I didn’t fully appreciate until this past week when Class Blogmeister (our blogging software and home) had a major hiccup. David Warlick provides this powerful tool for free for teachers and students, and it has become so popular and grown so much that his server became overwhelmed and started to have problems. To rectify the situation David programmed it so any post before May of this year was eliminated.

Now for many this would mean that last school year’s students’ posts would have been edited out, but this years would have remained intact. For some probably not a really big deal you might think … those kids are gone, my current class’s work can continue unscathed. And the full impact of this seemingly capricious, ill-advised decision by Dave to just hack away at what he obviously assumed were unimportant, forgotten posts didn’t hit me for about 30 seconds. When the realization hit me … there were posts there that have been read over 1100 times … that students point to with pride, its one of the aspects of blogging that makes it the “hook” that it is … that keeps students excited and engaged and wanting to write so much … NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

David had sent out a message about doing this and In my busy-ness I probably missed something or didn’t do a good job of reading between the lines or something, but it didn’t seem to address this issue … didn’t state that all would be returned at a later date. So I fired off an email sharing some of my concerns with David, all the time thinking that he must “get this” … he must understand that the archive of work is an essential part of a blog. Doesn’t he???

Just last week Mark Ahlness posted about using a laptop during parent conferences … what he called “Parent Conference 2.0.
Mark shared that parents were able to see the “portfolio” of their student’s writing online on his laptop. Mark and I were on the same wavelength because I was doing the same in my classroom. Most parents had seen some work online, but some had seen none. Students showed off our wiki pages, Flickr photos and videos … but what really got them going and verbalizing (important for second language learners) was their blog. Now this was before Dave ruthlessly slashed their posts and comments, so students were pointing out how many times their posts were being read and comments from as far away from China and New Zealand and Scotland and Germany, and as close as the student that sits next to them in class. Parents were reading posts and asking questions about who could read these (everyone in the world) and were amazed. And students left smiling.

Last week I also introduced blogging to teachers taking my Thursday night tech class and I pointed out the same things to them as the students had pointed out to their parents … the reads and comments, but also the improved writing and my impressions about their enthusiasm for writing when they blog.

In 2 weeks I’m participating in a educational technology showcase to politicians, the press and state and school district education administrators at a local community college. I’ve been asked to bring students and their laptops to show off all the things we do with technology. We plan to Skype others in … maybe Ustream.TV part of it. I know that my students showing off their blogs would be a critical part of that showcase … will that be lost now? Nevada is always at the bottom in education funding and FINALLY we are going to try and show the powers-that-be the power of educational technology.

So when Mark emailed to let me know that all was well … followed by an email from David expressing the same … the archive would be coming back when Dave finished adding a new server – had always intended to – of course I never doubted … I was relieved.

One good thing that came out of this is that it gave me reason to think about what a valuable resource blogging really is, and what parts of it seem to be critical to its motivating power.

Learning is messy!

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Tags: blogging, Class Blogmeister, Mark Ahlness

Paul Hamilton left this comment on my last post:

Paul – great questions – my responses:

Do you approve and/or edit every student post? How much editing do you do?

Yes I do. I use Class Blogmeister as my student blogging tool and it automatically sends every student post to an email account and an administrator tool and you have to give permission for the post to show on the blog. The same is true of comments others leave – they don’t appear on a student post unless I say it is OK (BTW – I have never had someone leave an inappropriate comment). I can edit student posts as well, however I don’t do it that way. I just don’t approve the post and have students go over it with me and they make the changes themselves and re-post. There is a way to leave comments for a student about their work, I haven’t tried that yet.

How time consuming is the process? (I notice that you were working at it on a Friday evening!)

The approval process (the way I do it described above) is a snap. I read a post or comment and either approve it or not and move on. Students note the next day if their post didn’t show up and then know they had too many errors and get to work editing. I took 40 minutes that night because students had left about 50 comments and 5 posts that day, which is unusual, and I was reading some to my wife as I went. If you spent time editing it would take longer, however some teachers I have talked to don’t have every student post at once -I can because my 5th graders all have wireless laptops.

Do you have any related tips for teachers who are holding back out of concerns in this area?

1) Class Blogmeister is safe to use because of the built-in safety measures. 2) Posts tend to be shorter writing pieces to deal with (at least so far) so are easier to deal with. 3) Students are motivated to do their best work because it becomes public, hence they are more focused and serious about their work. 4) My students’ writing has improved markedly in a short time.

OK so I’m tagging the following bloggers and any other teachers that have their students’ blogging to add their experience to Paul’s inquiry. No pressure here, just if you would like to share how you handle blogging in your classroom – it seems that your comments should be a valuable resource for all of us.

Doug Noon, Mark Ahlness, Clarence Fisher, Bud Hunt, Vicki Davis,

Lisa Parisi

LisaBlogged with Flock

Tags: Blogging

Each new school year one of the routines is to get signed releases on all my students so that work they do on web pages, wikis, videos, blogs and so on, can be published. This year the releases came back pretty quickly … except for 4 students. Excuses ranged from “I forgot again,” to my mom doesn’t want to sign it. Yesterday we took a tour of our class blog. I had added the names of new students that had signed releases and there was a buzz of excitement from the “newbies.” The “veterans” (returning students from last year), were tour guides and showed the others around. We also checked out a few other schools’ blogs.

As we were getting ready to leave at the end of the day I had to chuckle as one by one the 4 students without releases came to see me about getting another copy of the release. I said to one student who had told me in no uncertain terms earlier in the week that his mom was not going to sign, “I thought you said your mom wouldn’t sign.” “Ummm … she will now,” (smiles that “you caught me” smile), “I think she didn’t understand what we’ll be doing.”
“OK, … great, bring it back when you can.”

Learning is messy!

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