Activity 1: Blog Bling

Below is a video demonstrating a subduction zone. I would use this video each quarter with my science class to provide a visual for the process of subduction. I think this is a quality video because it was created by a valid science website and shows not only a computerized subduction process but also actual footage of what is happening at a subduction zone below the surface of the ocean. I use video clips daily with my science students because the primary focus of our study is what happening below the earth's surface, thus it is not anything they can witness for themselves.

Reflection

How could a blog be useful in your classroom or professional life? 

CURRENT EXPERIENCE: I currently use the blog format regularly on my section of our 5th grade team website to post weekly lesson and homework updates for my math, language arts, and science students.  I also use it to update my homeroom families on general homeroom happenings for the week. I try to motivate the kids to view the homeroom portion by including a Weekly Poll for the kids to answer. 

As a teaching team with the help of professionals from Bethel University, we also created a 5th grade writing blog using KidBlog where we plan to post student work from the school on the blog over the summer. We invited in the Bethel pros in to teach our students about blogging - the what's, how's and why's. We required permission from parents ahead of time and probably had about 50% of the parents approve their children's writing to be posted.

FUTURE EXPERIENCE: I have recently begun tutoring a 9th grade student for the summer in reading/writing. She doesn't love to read or write, so I decided to try having her set up her own blog and use that as a way to share her thoughts, responses, and reflections on what we read together and what I assign her. I think she is fairly pumped to try this method of "schoolwork" so I am excited to see where I can take a blog as an alternative way for a student to share their ideas.  

I think a blog would be fun to use with my math students. I have thought about posting a "Problem of the Week" type of question each Monday and having students find the answers on their own, but perhaps using the comments feature to provide hints for those struggling, cheer each other on, or announce when they have solved it. In Language Arts, I would like to really build on the use of a blog for my students to share their writing, as I discussed earlier. We were too late in the game to really get this up and running this past school year, so I would like to start it right away in the fall.

After checking out some of the other blogging sites, which do you think would be the best option for you? 

I am most familiar with Weebly, as I already use that both professionally and personally with families and now on an individual student basis. It was very easy to show the 9th grader I am tutoring how to get hers set up. Since we are starting to use Kidblog as well, I am looking forward to learning that tool better as well.