1. Students can write posts
about current events. This gives them the opportunity to read news stories, summarize them in their own words and then synthesize and evaluate those stories. From their analyses, they create new 'news' stories, filled with links to the original stories and reporters and with reflections and questions for further research. Current events stories can be linked to curriculum very easily and students can see the connections between their lives and those of the people they are writing about. Here are more examples:
Raimy,
Paan, and
Marc.
2. Writing about a novel. I post questions from various chapters of the novel and students post their answers on my blog. It is interesting to read all their opinions on one page and to see how students differ and and agree about what they are reading.
Sometimes I use the posts for students to
just post answers to questions about the novel, sometimes I ask them to read each other's posts and write a
reflection about
patterns, and sometimes they post questions that other students have to answer. The image below is a screen shot of a page I deleted where students asked and answered each other's questions. I still had the comments though, so I took a screen shot of some of them.
3. As an online learning record or portfolio. Students can use their blogs to post
work and reflections
from all of their classes. If they keep the blogs for a long time, they can actually see how their thinking, their reading and their worlds have changed over time. Parents can also use the blog to see what their children are doing in school.
4. As a
homework, classroom space. I post all the homework, links to websites where students can practice skills, learn new things and publish their writing. Every month I change at least a few links so that students can try new things.
5. As a showcase. On my blog there are usually a few pages dedicated to showcasing student work. Parents, administrators, students and global visitors can look at good quality work and be impressed with students as writers and thinkers. Aside from the class blogs, you can create sites of student writing. Here is
one we put together two years ago with all the 7th grade students.
6. As a way to bring students together anonymously. Our class blog has always had an
advice column on it. Students can post and answer questions anonymously. This has worked quite well at the beginning of every year to bring students together and to make them realize that they are not the only ones feeling what they're feeling. Here is link to a
site created by last year's students to help this year's 7th graders. Students can also go to
this book review site (
it's an old site and you have to scroll down the page and look to the right to get the genres) and read reviews to help them decide what to read next.
7. To build an online, electronic, interactive and changing hypertextbook for students to use that cover a particular topic. For several years now I have kept wikis dedicated to content learning. Students research topics and post links for next year's students, they can look at work samples from previous years and they can learn from their peers (past 7th graders, who are now all over the world). The wiki gets richer and more interesting each year as new information and perspectives are added to the mix. Here is an example from a
novel study. Here is an example from a social studies unit on
immigration.
8.
Parent Conferences. Students post goals, writing samples and sometimes even letters to their parents. During student-led conferences, students show parents what images they chose to symbolize their goals and back up their choices with real examples of their work. Parents like being able to see their children's work, their goals, their images and their ability to create something (the wiki pages). When they conference a second time, new work and reflections are added and parents can compare and contrast.
9. To collaborate. Two years ago and this year students in one class wrote a collaborative story with students in another class. They wrote at different times and in different places but they continued each other's stories. Other student collaborative sites include a
vocabulary studying website, and a
digital yearbook.
10. You can also create a space for students to explore outside of class. This is a
pilot project I am working on with a few students right now. As students review the sites and explore the programs, interested students will work on this site together to create a central classroom link for students who want to play a little bit more with some of the app creation and animation programs. We will also link to interesting articles and new sites.
