Here it is, The Blog of Eckhoff! I find it funny that it took a class for me to start one of these since the peer pressure for just such an action has been mounting over the past 2 years!
I think that this will be a very interesting experience both professionally and personally as I try to get away from emailing everybody with pictures, updates, assignments, etc. I love the fact that people can just pop over to a blog and get what they need at their convenience. Once I figure out the RSS feed system, there’ll be no stopping me!
The things I can do with this tool as a teacher seem endless! With commenting as a possibility, I can now successfully take class discussions out of the classroom, which will open up many an opportunity to my students but especially the shy ones that don’t speak up in class very much. Last year, I learned about embedding using slide share and youtube resources, which can also take this blog to new levels by combining different modes of expression both for the benefit of my teaching, and teacher reflection. My hope is to then pass these skills on to my students so that they can start their own blogs and complete projects that include print, audio, video, and pictures. I’ve directed assignments like this in the past, but with my limited technical know-how, they tended to be rather sloppy as we attempted to move from medium to medium by way of complicated equipment setup and time wasting transitions.
About the only downside I can see to this tool is the lack of knowlege in some of my students and their parents. Even with email as a communication tool, I ran into many families that were not adept enough to handle it. In fact, I have a moodle site that I currently use in my job and I’ve spent the past week trying to get my students oriented to it. This has proved to be rather challenging despite my many links, emails, and directions. Hopefully, down the line, I will be able to teach them enough skills to make all of this much easier.
As far as a personal blog goes, I have the perfect topic: Obnoxious Neighbors. In just the past 2 days I’ve had to listen to a string of expletives from across the way, watch as a scantilly clad man weeded his garden…while I was weeding mine, and deal with my garage mate (I live in a townhouse/condo) and all of her worthless garbage all over both halves of the garage. Last night, she leaned a bag of garbage on my car. I should start documenting all of this stuff. I think it could be very funny!
I think I’d better post this now and see what the rest of the class has come up with. Enjoy!
Posts
2 comments:
-As a beginner blogger, I think you just learned how to use the RSS feed by subscribing to your blog partners blogs. As far as I know, the RSS feed happens automatically on blogger/blogspot.
-I really love using blogs for keeping my family posted on my travels too. Its great to keep in touch with a bunch of people...and your friends/family can visit your blog when they want to.
-I agree with you about the different levels of blog-comfort among students and family/parents. Although Richard stresses that students will be more tech savvy than their teachers, its also important that some kids won't have access to computers at home.
-I DEFINITELY think that you should have an obnoxious neighbor blog. Let me know if you do, I'll subscribe (and give you story ideas if you are brain dead).
I have found it a little more difficult than I had anticipated to incorporate blogs and stuff to my classroom. I don't want to be one of those teachers who automatically smacks down any new ideas, but it really is difficult if I am the only one who thinks like that at my school. This year I am at a school that is more willing to indulge my technological/digital aspirations, but still, people shake their heads at me when I tell them I want to do my blog project.
I feel your pain on the "teaching technology to teach literacy" thing. Kids know how to do specific things on computers, and those things are not blogging.
Post a Comment