Staff Development 9/1/2006 Activity #1
Posted by nancyscofield on August 30, 2006
Please review one or more teacher blogs on the MabryOnline site and describe how they are using blogs in their classrooms. What items are common throughout many/most of the blogs? What are some unique applications being used by some teachers? How can we incorporate these practices into our own classes?
Be sure to include the names of the blogs you are reviewing.
Thanks!
September 1st, 2006 at 8:38 am
I looked at a teacher blog for Maybury. I think this is a wonderful tool, but I have no idea where to find the time to do this stuff. My planning period isn’t long enough and of course there are those papers to grade. I’m overwhelmed.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:43 am
I went to Mabry and looked at Mrs. Bowman’s blog for her geometry class. She is posting daily summaries of goals, standards being taught and homework assignments. I could see doing that for my math classes
September 1st, 2006 at 8:44 am
Nancy, I looked at the Social Studies and P.E. bloges for Maybury. Both teachers used the blog as a summary of what was going on in class. I wonder how is this different then center point? Which will be better suited for parents and students?
September 1st, 2006 at 8:45 am
viewed several field trips to state parks taken by science classes. these also included objectives and daily assignments.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:48 am
I looked at two of the science teachers blogs. They used them for posting information but had no examples of student work, and had no students responding to any of the blogs. I think I would want more student work involved with my blog site. I hope to have mine up and running soon.
TJ
September 1st, 2006 at 8:51 am
I’m wondering why we are working so hard to make human teachers obsolete
September 1st, 2006 at 8:52 am
I investigated an activity called doodle splash — a way to summarize in dooding for content reading classes. Basically students keep a journal of doodles. This may be a good way to learn/ take nots for kids who have trouble in these areas. A picture is worth a thousand words. I would still like to see some writing done!
September 1st, 2006 at 8:59 am
Nance, I went to Mabry and looked at the PE and LA pages: I thought the summer reading thing was very impressive because if you really love teaching, you can now do it all summer, with any student who wants to be taught.
There are plusses and minuses…you could NOT reach students too, and there could be even larger divisions in learning, rich vs poor- a new Darwinism!
September 1st, 2006 at 9:03 am
I looked at the video blogs for Mabry last time we had the ipod inservice and what fun! I loved the awards set up by category just like the oscars.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:03 am
Most of the teacher blogs that I looked at had homework assignments, daily goals, etc. I think that this is a great tool, but we also have to keep in mind that not every student has access to a computer/internet access at home, and we need to continue to accommodate everyone.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:17 am
I look like most of the teachers use their blog site to post reminders regarding homework assignments, upcoming tests and project dates. We could easily do the same thing, but it strikes me that we could do the same thing with e-mail.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:19 am
Looking at the media center blog for MabryOnline I was dissapointed. So many of the other teachers are doing really cool things to get students communicating and using the blogs but not so in the media blog. The media center has general information, a book of the week, and some links to databases but no student interaction and response. I plan to have STUDENTS create audio and video reviews for books and post these by category. Do you have other ideas that would enhance a media blog?
September 1st, 2006 at 10:05 am
Tammy and others expressed their concern about finding time to keep up with blogging in addition to everything else. I know time is precious, and we all have way more to do than we have time to do it. One nice thing about the blogs is that we can have STUDENTS do the posting. Students can take responsibility for posting daily summaries of class material, homework, etc. I hope that as we get better at implementing these tools, our work load is lighted at least a little bit.
This is in no way meant to replace human teachers. It’s just another tool for us to use to work with kids. It’s a great opportunity to extend the learning BEYOND the classroom. It’s taking tools (blogs, podcasts, mp3 players, etc) that the kids are using for ENTERTAINMENT and applying it to their EDUCATION.
Thank you all for your thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Let’s keep the conversation going! After all, that’s what true blogging is all about.