Learning As I Go - Part 2
January 31, 2008 by Kate Olson
In Learning As I Go, I discussed starting a collaborative blog project with my 4th graders. Today I was able to actually make changes to how I presented the material to the class and how we utilize blogging in our unique classroom set-up. Remember, I have 2 classes of 30 min each, 32 students in each class, and I only see them for 25 days before moving to the next school. Whew, it looks even worse in writing!
Last time we visited Global Bloggers, I introduced the blog and blogging in general fairly quickly and then told the students to comment on a post. I realize I didn’t set them up with enough information or time to do this effectively. I also underestimated the amount of time it would take the 4th graders to write a comment, as well as the writing ability of 4th graders in general.
I was much happier with how class went today! After our keyboarding warm-up and the introduction of new keys, I had the students sit on the floor in a group to look at the projection screen. I pulled up Global Bloggers and we all read the new post from Anne about her school, students, and a bad fire that broke out there recently. I read it to the students and we discussed each part as we went along, coming up with some ideas of what the students could write in their comments. The kids LOVED hearing all this stuff about a country they’ll probably never get to visit and couldn’t get over the fact that Anne’s students never see snow! I was so happy that we actually we were able to all process the information together.
After reading and discussing the posts, the students returned to their computers and started composing a comment in a word processor, NOT on the blog. I realized last time that if we ever compose directly on the blog, we wouldn’t be able to save the work if we ran out of time. Today, most of the students were able to get a few sentences done in the short amount of time we had, and we’ll be able to pick it up again next week.
My goal for our last blogging session (I only have this group for 1 more week) is to have each student finish a comment and copy/paste it into the blog for submission. I’m a little worried about how this will go, since they were working in the word processor in Bernie’s Typing Travels, but I have a plan B, don’t worry! Plan B is to compose one large commen from the entire class, incorporating parts of each student’s individual work. I still have to work out who would actually key this in, as I need to make sure a student does it - it’s keyboarding class, after all!
I look forward to trying this out next week with my classes…….and then on to a new school, where I’ll have to teach blogging all over again! I’ll have this perfected by June, that’s for sure - I still have 6 more schools to go to! Oh yeah, and throw in switching 6th grade groups every 10 days for 7 rotations………….
(If you’re reading in an aggregator, take a minute to come check out the cool new image I put in my header - I LOVE it! I’m trying to make this a place I like to work 
)
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Nice header image! Did you take that yourself? Cool!
I had my 9th/10th graders blogging and gave them guidelines such as post a positive comment or what they learned, state a question of something they would like to know more about, and a critique if they did not quite agree. Some students take a long time writing comments. It is great that you are starting young as students get better at it the more they do it.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could keep blogging after leaving your keyboarding class? It is tough having such a turnaround of students.
Could students work in teams to leave a comment vs. a whole class? Then, more blog posts could be commented on.
Kate,
I wanted to thank you for adding me to your Blogroll. I also wanted to let you know that I added you to mine. I have been so busy lately. I haven’t been keeping up with my blog but I am taking time today to catch up. BTW- I like your new header image.
Kate:
Thanks for describing how you went about teaching this class. One of the most interesting things about teaching children is learning what they are capable of in a certain amount of time. As time passes, you will learn a lot of little tricks like the ones you mentioned above.
I’d really like to know more about what your “life” is like at school. This has given me a glimpse. How many grade levels do you teach? Where do you teach when you get to the school? (Does each school have a computer lab?) Is it a 1:1 situation (must be for keyboarding)? How long have you been doing this? Did you have a curriculum in place before you arrived. It’s all very interesting to me.
I teach K-8 computers in my own lab. 35 minutes once per week (K-2 with the class split between myself and library so I see about 12 children at a time.) 42 minutes once per week in grades 3-5 with between 15 and 21 children per class. 6-8 twice per week for 42 minutes with +/- 20 students per class. I see them year round. My curriculum is posted at http://saintmichael.wikispaces.com for each grade.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog so far, I’ll be checking back for new ideas! I love the logistical info in this post. I often find that the little things- like how to save work at the last moment without losing any data is so key to get down into a routine.
I’m looking for ways to integrate more technology into my art curriculum, yet only having one computer in the room gets tricky!