World Wide Web

Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to expand the kinds of activities that I am doing with my students in class.  I'm a little too hectic during the day to plan some of these ideas, but my mind is working overtime everywhere else...in the shower, on the train, at 3:30 in the morning.  One of the things I really wanted to do with my students this year was start a blog.  I found kidblog.org which so far has been great!  There are a couple of reasons that this blog was exactly what I was looking for.  First, it is very user friendly while also allowing students to change backgrounds and fonts.  Second, the only people who can see the blog are the students in the classes I've created.  This eliminates any concerns about security and privacy.  Third, not only can students read and comment on my blog posts, but they can also create their own personal blogs.  AND, last but not least, I can monitor all activity on the blog and nothing gets published without my approval.  So far none of my students have posted or commented inappropriately, but I think it may be partially because they know I have to approve everything.
This week I posted the first assignment onto the blog.  For homework, students had to answer a question by posting a comment onto my blog post.  I know that most students have access to the internet at home, but I wasn't sure how accessible this assignment would be considering it was the first time I had required them to go online.  Because of this I gave two nights for students to post and allowed students to sign up during park or after school to use a laptop from the technology cart.  Posts were to be submitted by 6pm and by 7:30 33 out of 49 students had commented on the blog.  Not the turnout I was hoping for, but ok considering it was the first blog assignment and, frankly, not that bad compared to how much homework I get back on a regular day.
Having a student and class blog is one of the things I'm most excited about working on this year.  I hope that I have mastered the process for next year's 6th graders so that we can fully utilize it.