Last year I learned how to be a connected learner with PLP, and now I want to take what I learned to the next level by contributing to other learners instead of just taking. Paula Montrie, the Middle School librarian here at Friends, started a Blogging Alliance. About ten of us will learn about blogging together. Doing this by myself hasn't worked, so I'm hoping the support and camaraderie of the group will take me to the next level. I love that there is no pressure and each of us can select the involvement and level of commitment we choose. Paula gave us five levels to choose from: Just lookin'-Not touchin', Commentators, Baby Bloggers, Blogging Buddies and Teacher Blogger. I hope she writes more about this on her blog, Reeled in Research.

At the same time I want to help our students and teachers become connected learners. Last year several teachers worked with me to get some of our lower school students blogging. The students loved connecting with classmates as well as getting comments from strangers in other schools. I learned a lot about blogging in lower school at ISTE 2012, and have shared it with our faculty. This year instead of just 3 classes blogging we could have up to 10. Some teachers are starting with class blogs using Edublog or Blogger while others have set up a Kidblog account for their class. It's exciting to see the enthusiasm spread.

Lower School Blogging - Baby Steps

For awhile now I've wondered how successful blogging would be in lower school. I read a lot of class blogs, but that wasn't what I was looking for, so I found a few teachers at my school who were willing to give blogging a try. We started slowly with one second grade class, and now we have a third and fourth grade class blogging and commenting. The first grade teachers may join with a class blog, but they thought individual posts would be too much for some of their students. The three teachers who are doing this with me have taken time to learn about blogging themselves and read some of the 6 part series on the Langwitches Blog. We started with a prompt or topic for the students to write about, and allowed them to comment on several posts. Then we looked at the comments and talked about what made a good comment and why? One of the second graders said, "It's like talking to my friends anytime I want to."
Only one class has opened the posts up and let the students write about anything that interested them, but they were the first class to blog. Third grade is using it to get feedback and help with their poetry writing. The teacher also wants to use the blog as a way for the students to reflect on the unit. Our 4th graders are just beginning, and enjoyed their first time last week.
We haven't had much feedback from the parents yet, but one parent liked the 3rd grade blog and was glad the students' posts were focused on a topic for school. While it was nice to hear, we want the student blogs to be a mixture of educational reflection and thinking as well as individual expression.
I'm hoping we will have the classes reading and commenting on each other's posts soon. We are all learning about this together.