On Thursday, I introduced student blogging. To begin, students perused several different professional blogging sites (such as cooking blogs, sports blogs, book blogs, etc.). Then we talked about what a blog is and what we noticed about blogs.
After that, students were presented with their very first blogging challenge: to introduce themselves! Students were challenged to think about their blogging audience and what they would want to say to their readers.
To begin, students started out by writing paper blogs. After they drafted for a little bit, we paused to have a conversation about Internet safety. While Kidblog, the site we use, is for teachers and educators and is secure, we still thought it was important to discuss the types of information students should include on their blogs. Building off an idea by
Pernille Ripp, to discuss Internet Safety, the students I talked about how the Internet is like the Mall:
After students finished writing their blogs, we next discussed commenting. Again, based on an idea by Mrs. Ripp, the students and I discussed the difference between "Highway" comments and "Dead-End" comments.
Then, students used sticky notes to read and comment on their peers blogs.
On Monday, students will work on transferring their introductory posts online. All posts will need to be approved by me before they are published, but posts should be up soon! The KidBlog sites are now listed under the "Helpful Links" section on the top left of this blog. You can also access the blogs by clicking on the links below:
