Blogging: Peering Into Other Countries...

I believe that after I become fully experienced with using blogging tools and learning all of their capabilities, I would have my students use blogs along side webcams. I was researching the topic and found that one could incorporate a webcam section of a blog of a classroom based out of a spanish-speaking country. This will be a great way for my students to actively communicate with native speakers and peer into their classroom. A great follow-up activity would be for them to establish web penpals. I can't wait to try it out in my future class.

Assistive Technology and Blogging

I thought this weeks work on assistive technology was interesting. I did a posting in the conference so I thought I would post it here as well so here it goes...

I have done some research in other classes concerning assistive technology. I really enjoy reading about the different types of technology that is available for children with the disabilities. My favorite piece of technology that is available voice recognition software. I've actually had experience with this software. Adobe has the feature in some versions of their software. I could create a document in Adobe and have it read back to me or I could have it read a document that was e-mailed to me. I'm not disabled, I found the feature by accident. I used to work for a legal division of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and they had the software for blind people that worked for the agency. It did help me because reading cases all day can get a little boring and this makes it easier. Without the feature it would be more difficult for the blind to do a lot of thing. They will always have braille, but it takes time for documents to get converted to braille and then have them returned. I hope that a lot of schools are making change to allow for this software, because will feel more involved in their activities with this feature.

I think that the voice recognition could also be used with blogging. It would allow blind students to be able to hear what is posted on the blog and respond. It's such a cool software option. I hope that teachers could also use if they decide to create a class blog.

Blogging in Kindergarten

I have thought a lot about how blogging could benefit my class. I am having a hard time since most of my students are not 100% comfortable with the computer and many of them do not write and read at a high level. So the only way I would be able to do a blog with Kindergarten students is if we did a class blog, were I would stand up in front of the class and use the laptop and LCD projector and expose the students to the concept of blogging.

I think I could keep things simple and we could try to write to other schools about things we are doing in the classroom and maybe they could write back. Just a thought. If anyone has any good ideas I would love to hear them.

Amanda

International Blog

One of the discussion guidelines discusses international participation with students. I was thinking that this would go with what I am currently working on with my students. I placed my class into pairs. I tried to match students who don't normally hang out together and also students who haven't worked together already this year. Then I let them look at a map with their partner. They needed to pick any country that they wanted to learn more information about as long as it wasn't the United States. The students did a great job of choosing countries and we have a wide range from Germany to Mexico and lots in between.

Anyway, to further this study I could set up a blog for them to gather information from students in those countries. I am not sure how to locate safe sites where only other students would participate. Any ideas? I would be a bit hesitant to do this, but it would give the students lots of new information about the country. They could send pictures of what their school looks like in the USA and pictures could come back to us. I have always felt like if people were able to get to know other people from different cultures and countries they wouldn't be so likely to have poor thoughts about the whole country. This could help my student make positive impressions and be positively impressed upon.

Kim

Classroom Blog Application

At first, I had difficulty in seeing the potential for blogs for a high school mathematics class. Next year, our school district will require students who failed one or more semesters of math this year to take an additional math strategies class along side their regular math class as one of their electives. The goal is to help students pass their current math course.

Of course, math teachers will have to teach the math strategies classes. As a result, the students in an Algebra 1 math strategies class may receive their primary instruction from a number of Algebra 1 teachers. The question becomes, "How do you help students who have difficulty learning in a traditional setting become succesful without simply repeating the lessons from their regular class that they did not understand in the first place?"

As a result, I have approached the curriculum assistant principal about creating a Computer-Based Algebra program. While I have a concept, I certainly do not have all the details. However, I know blogs will play a part. Therefore, I am creating a blog to use in the presentation I will give the principal on Feb. 29th. This blog will display a sample lesson (or two) that students would do and post their comments. If all goes well, I will continue to develop the course as a pilot for implementation in the fall. Wish me luck!

I am still unsure of my thoughts of blogging. It is a lot of fun, but I still want to learn more about the whole blogging process. I think it is well known with teenagers and young adults but maybe not people of the working world. I plan to learn more about blogging and how to use it more effectively with my students.

I have learned a lot this week about blogging and wikis and podcasts. Looking at everyone favorite podcast was great. I found a lot of different podcasts that will be helpful in teaching my Kindergarten students. I found some on reading and writing skills. I am still thinking of fun ways to use computers with Kindergarteners.

I am sorry for the late post. I didn't realize that we had a blog post due by Sunday night. I was away for the weekend with limited internet access. I will be on time from now one.

working together for a math problem...blog style

This week I have been thinking about how blogging could be used as a collaborative tool in my elementary school. I teach two classes of math for third grade and I thought about pairing up the students. This way their partner would not be in their class, but it would be a way to communicate with another third grader. However, I would not need to check out the other student since I would already know him or her. I could give each partner a challenge problem and they would need to solve it. The problem could appear in their blog space and then each student would need to access it. The student would then need to write how they would solve the problem and show step by step directions. Each child would then need to communicate with each other on if they are correct or not. This way each child would be checking each other and they could just copy off each other. I would have access to it and they could even get a grade for their own individual work. (It would be very easy to tell if the other person copied work…third graders aren’t extremely practiced at the art of cheating..at least that has been my experience…thank goodness.)

Kim

BTW the picture came from http://www.wolfswamp.org/pix/math.gif