Have you visited other blogs and left comments to students in other countries? Would you like to continue blogging? How does it make you feel to know that other students and your parents are reading what you are writing at school? What interesting things have you learned about from visiting other blogs? How do you overcome the challenges of reading blogs that are written by students who speak another language?
These are some of the questions that we asked our students. Their answers were recorded on video and you can see and also hear them here.
The students had good answers for these questions, but I would like to share a little bit more. As a resource teacher, I jump on every opportunity to showcase my students’ abilities. When I returned from the 2009 TCEA Conference, I was convinced that my students could improve a multitude of skills through blogging. There were no blogs on our intermediate campus, so we would be the pioneers in this technological adventure. Were we up for it? You bet!
We wanted the other students to notice what we were doing and ask their teachers why they had no classroom blog. In a short time, our students had visitors from over 35 countries and over 200 comments posted to their blog. Every Thursday, these students proudly wear their C-O Connections blogging t-shirts.
Other students acknowledge them by name now. They possess an ownership for their learning and a confidence that they did not have before blogging. Parents are beginning to post in reply to their child’s posts and have subscribed to our blog. The process of blogging has brought a closeness between school and community, and more importantly, between child and parent.
Making this change in our classroom curriculum has truly made a difference in the lives of each of my students, and some of them will never be the same.
This post has been written on “the differences blogging has made in our lives” as part of The Edublogger’s Student Competition!
Hi C-O Connections, thanks for taking the time to create two excellent posts for the Student Blogging Competition.
I especially really enjoyed watching your video on your thoughts. Your blogging shirt sounds an excellent idea. In Australia students have to wear a uniform to school every day – but I like the idea of having a special one for blogging.
Keep up the excellent work!
We are a class of Year 2 children at Pt England School in Auckland New Zealand. We are looking for new contacts and are pleased that we found your blog. Thank you for sharing with us.
From,
Mrs She and Room 5 .
I really enjoyed reading your blog. We have added you to our blog list. Please add our blog to yours. http://www.coconnections.wonecks.net
It is my goal to add Virtual Booktalks to our class website. http://www.tinyurl.com/pcranford
I already have the page set up. We just have to finish up some state assessments before we can concentrate our efforts in that direction. Your class might enjoy seeing some of our podcast though. Just go to our class website and follow the link to Cranford’s Podcasts.
I teach a special education classroom, and they love to blog. We would love to communicate directly with your students via posted podcasts. Do you think we could arrange that kind of collaboration? Also we have a twitter name. If your class has a twitter account, you can go to C-OConnections and request to follow us. We have 4 classrooms that we talk with on a regular basis. We also love to Skype and would love to connect with your class in that manner. Our Skype name is pcranford
We look forward to hearing from you and your students.
I really enjoyed listening to the students comments about blogging and we would like to be linked to your blog please. I also like the idea of a blogging shirt but we have uniforms in our school too so I’m thinking of a special lanyard and having a “blogger of the day” who wears the special lanyard.
What a great blog! We learned about you from the 2KM Blog and added you to our third grade blog roll in California.
We also mentioned you in our post below. 🙂
http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/our-global-friends.html
We look forward to commenting more when we get back from our Spring Break!
Linda
I loved this post. Very special students indeed!
Hi Pam, I’m working through the entries in the Student blogging competition and wanted to check out your video again. Unfortunately it looks like Teacher tube has changed locations of your video and it doesn’t play.
Can you give me the link to its location so I can check it out?
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Congratulations on your win in the Edublogger student competition. Make sure you visit the Edublogger to get your badge which you can add to your blog.
Congratulations on winning!!! Your students did such a great job. I know they are enjoying the blogging. Keep up the good job!