Classroom Blogs

I (Melissa) am again using our class blogs to elicit thinking and writing about text.  In line with our thinking about this grant, I am trying to push the definition of text to include things like video clips.  Last week we read the short story "One Throw."  It was a perfect time to introduce my kids to the classic comedy sketch "Who's on First."

So, keeping with the Abbott and Costello topic, this weekend I had students watch the hilarious "Two Tens for A Five" routine (embedded in the blog) and write about a time they tricked someone. Here is a link.

What's been great about this type of assignment is that I have loaded my students' email addresses into my email reader. That means I read their comment, write back to them, and then put a grade right into my grading software. It's so fast I can't believe it counts as real grading!

This grant has been a great opportunity to "learn by doing." I encounter problems and find ways to solve them. That's what learning is, right.

Things I have learned:
1. It's great to "grab" the html code from one blog and paste it into another blog if I want duplicate posts.
2. I have to remind my students over and over that class blogs require standard, academic English without typos, spelling mistakes, and other errors.
3. Everyone on the blog (my students and me) have the ability to edit.I have to figure out how to "lock" my posts.  I don't know if this is possible. But today, one student accidentally over-wrote my post and replaced it with his comments, instead of using the comment button.