Room 3’s Blog

Well here it is! Finally! It’s not in the format that Hamish wanted but it was too big to upload there so … Keep watching as there are planned for more before the end of our school year.

Knowing that you are a little bit lazy I have copied Jo McCleay’s latest post here so that you can respond to some of her students work.

We had a great lesson today in another year 9 class where I was team teaching with Bernie and getting the class set up with blogs. They are now a going concern and you can find them here. There was so much fun in the class as the students were figuring out all the cool things you can do. Some of the interesting new bloggers are the writers of Annabelle’s News and The Original Hoganbogan. I also love Sarah’s take on her life, and Olivia’s sense of humour. It would be great if you could stop by and encourage some of these “awesome” young writers (I’m even beginning to sound like them). I just love their energy and enthusiasm and the way they took to this even though they had to try three times. I know some student bloggers will be starting to blog again in the next few weeks, so let’s get the links happening. I really like the way that Lynne has started sending the “8 random facts meme” through her class of student bloggers. Maybe we could make some links that way.

Hi

I’m really trying to encourage student blogging in my class and have directed my delightful students to a wide range of other student blogs (from Year 2 to Year 10 NZ equivalent). I’d really like for any one who reads this and has a class of students to make a comment on my student blogs .

BTW - A request from students, if you are reading their blogs please do not start at the top of the list - pick randomly!

I think this class is well on the way to being ‘bloggers’. All but six students have now created a school blog for themselves. This is primarily for their work and English and is being trialled as a sort of e-portfolio. Unfortunately we still have the ‘paper’ English portfolios (school policy) so we are doubling up but it has been great to see the work the students are putting into their school blogs.

Along with this, their interest in web 2.0 applications is growing and one student is setting up his RSS feeds (he has 3 blogs of his own!)

So if you are reading this please take a look at some of their work and they would love it if you left a comment. Please excuse their spelling errors - I haven’t decided whether these should be corrected or left as is.

I found this today and would really like some feedback as to whether you think it could be a useful project for us to work on during this term. It wouldn’t have to be a huge time commitment as we do have to spend most of our time on our inquiry unit. Let me know if you are interested in doing something on this.

This site has been set up by Iain, an ICT cluster facilitator from Dunedin.

It occurred to me that it would could be a powerful thing if children from around the world could voice their concerns, and brainstorm possible solutions to some of the issues that face our blue and green marble in space…before it turns into a brown marble in space!
So, I set up a social network at ning.com, ‘If I could change the world‘, with the idea that this could be a place where children could raise their voices. At the moment I have three main issues that can be tackled. But if this takes off, who knows what might happen?
1)Poverty
2)Pollution
2)ViolenceI have started the project with three ways you can contribute.
1) Artwork: Get kids creating artwork that offer solutions or ideas about global or local issues
2) Blogging: Write posts about these issues
3) Video: Create a 1 minute video

So this is my little attempt at starting something to help change the world for better, but it will be YOU who help make it come true, so please, come join the site and contribute, and spread the word!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Now that we have looked at the work being done by students in Mr Harbeck’s class in Canada I want to to think about what you could do. What could you add to your English portfolio space or what could we start on our Maths wikispace.

Here are the links to the work we had a look at today so that you can go back and have a look at it. MakeItInteresting is the blog where we saw the slideshare portfolios. While you are there take a look at their Maths blogs. This is a record of what they have learned in Maths each day / session. Students have turns being the scribe (writer) and post what they were taught. Sounds like a good idea for us but take a look and let me know if you think it will work for us. We may have to start another blog or we could use our Maths wiki.

This is the wikispace where the students have their Maths work. Here is the link to Angelic’s page which we were quite impressed with. It would be a neat idea to leave some comments about their work. You never know you may be able to start up some on-line dialogue with them.

Here’s another link, studentblogwikitools, that you might like to look at as it has some examples of the students’ work plus some useful tools.

Now I am waiting for your ideas. Who is going to get started on our Maths wiki or blog???