Gotta love Blogging!

I first got interested in blogging a couple of years ago when one of my friends backpacked through several countries and I was able to vicariously travel with her through her blog posts.  Reading her funny stories and seeing her posted pictures felt like receiving a daily postcard from her. Then, in Dr. Frye’s Teaching the Language Arts, I was able to experiment with having my own blog. I wrote about assignments I was currently thinking through and posted pictures of works in progress. Futhermore, I was able to see what other classmates were working on and piggyback off of good ideas.  Blogging became my brainstorming space and my creative outlet where I could save ideas to later come back to. That experience alone got me thinking about how students could use a blog and how their work could be shared with eachother and their parents. Thus, I set up a class blog with my 6th grade students and we worked through some poetry pieces on our class blog. The kids would write a poem, post it to the blog, and then I and their other classmates would respond to the piece. We also shared their final drafts of poems on the blog…believe me, publishing the poems on the blog was every bit as powerful as having them hung in the hallway!

For all of these reasons, I feel that blogging has taken as much of a necessary place in my classroom and instruction as a bookshelf has. My students are so motivated by this tool…they even do extra work so it can be posted on our blog. Not only that, but I have found that my students are more conscious of the work that goes on the blog and they want it to be perfect.  One new idea I have for the coming school year is to use a class blog as a place to encourage independent reading. Each of my students has a book goal every 9 weeks. The books read by each student are self-selected and have to be on the student’s individual level. Instead of using so much time doing book talks to get kids interested in certain books, I am going to do my book talks on our class blog. I will also invite other students to compose a book talk about a completed book. Moreover, because so many authors now have blogs, I can link an author’s blog to the book talk which may trigger even higher interest in the book among students. I think this will be a great tool not only for getting excited about books, but it will motivate kids to read because they will want a chance to tell about their book on the blog.

I, for one, am 100% SOLD on the benefits of educational blogging!

New Literacies and Technology

I believe that literacy is a word that encompasses anything related to text, reading, and writing. Of course, pen, paper, and books are still a pretty good way to receive and give information, but in today’s world, students should be exposed and allowed to interact with many other venues for literacy. If we are truly trying to educate 21st century learners, then we, as teachers, should be teaching literacy through many diverse forms and genres. We should also be educating students about the various meanings for types of literacy.  Some new literacies that I have learned about within the last year are blogs, online journals, digital texts, storyboards, and videos like the ones in United Streaming where one can learn as much about something like the Holocaust as you could by reading a Social Studies textbook. Basically, new literacy to me means text in digital or computerized mode.

Technology to me is any NEW way involving a computer to do something that could traditionally be done with pen and paper. For instance, it might mean having a conversation with a classmate vie a discussion board rather than passing a note. OR it might mean making a video to showcase a book that has been read instead of making a poster about that book. Using technology can illustrate for students that there are real life implications for assignments they are invited to complete. For instance, students can share ideas and hold discusssions via a class blog. This invites students to put writing, critical thinking, and reading skills to good use. It also invites students to read blogs about other ideas they may be interested in. Hey- not all kids like books, and as far as I’m concerned, reading IS reading! Students can also present ideas about things they have read or learned through movies made with iMOVIE or Movie Maker. These videos are far more entertaining and motivating than your average “stand in front of the class” presentation. These videos also encourage group collaboration and creativity…high quality real world skills!

There are so many different ways for students to retrieve information, digest it, and exhibit what they have learned. As teachers, we are called to learn about the latest literacies and put them to use in our classrooms.

Introduction

Hey there! I’m Brooke and this will be my 6th year teaching and my 4th year teaching sixth-grade Language Arts at Burns Middle School in Cleveland County. I love everything associated with Language Arts and I am passionate about “winning over” my middle school students and engrossing them in all things Language Arts.

Over the past couple of years, I have learned so many cool ways to grab students’ attention and motivate them through the use of technology. I hope to only further my knowledge while in this course. Middle schoolers do not always like to read or write but they do LOVE to express themselves, and often times, technology provides the perfect educational yet cool outlet for students to tell their ideas.

I feel comfortable with technology and consider myself to be an interested and quick learner when it comes to new ideas related to technology. In my classroom, I use technology daily through the use of my Smartboard. I love using it to display websites for my kids, take virtual field trips, conduct whole class research, and have students participate in filling in graphic organizers.  I also use Facebook, iTunes, my ipod, and email daily. I am also an avid blog reader.

I hope to gain a lot of new information from this class and learn new and effective ways I can use technology more often in my classroom. This should be an informative and exciting class!

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