Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Classroom Blogging 101

One of my goals this year was to get all of my 2nd graders blogging. In theory it sounds wonderful, but logistically it can be a little tricky with only 2 classroom computers and 30 minutes in the computer lab per week.

Luckily we have 2 COWS (computer on wheels) available for checkout so I got them for 2 days. The students were very excited about using the laptops, but some had never used them before. It took some of them a little time to get used to the mouse pad and other features. Also, most of them are not familiar with the QWERTY keyboard so typing was painfully slow. On the second day everyone got logged on to the blog at www.kidblog.org much quicker and we were able to practice posting and commenting.  Our class blog is password protected for now, but I am hoping to open it up to some of the classrooms we will be working with on the Global Classroom Project.
18 students on laptops = 1 busy teacher!
Two weeks later my students are eagerly writing about fall and Halloween. Their favorite prompt is "Plan a Halloween party". They have embraced the writing process and look forward to our conference time together. After all of the revising and editing is done, they get to create a new blog post! I have added some teachers and administrators at our school as "guests" so they can leave comments. The students love getting feedback from their former teachers and the principal!
Having only 2 classroom computers has worked out fine since everyone is  in different stages of the writing process.  We will check out the C.O.W.S every few weeks, but it takes a lot of time to set up, log on, etc....

Sometimes the teacher shares her computer ;-)



2 comments:

  1. This gives me hope that my students can blog too :). Thanks so much for sharing.

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  2. Hi
    I know your dilemma only too well. It is a challenge but like you, have found where there's a will, there's a way! My kids are eagerly wanting to post something each week. Thank you for sharing about how you go about blogging!
    Kate Todd

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