Blogging from the top of the Rockies

Last November my wife took a group of middle school students to Nicaragua to do some service work, she also took my 13-year-old son. During the weeks that they were gone I would check the school's website for any update as to what they were doing. I must of checked in on them at least 5 times a day. It was great to see photos and read the blog about their adventures.

This week it was my turn to return the favor...

This week I went along with the annual field trip into the mountains of Colorado to teach our 5th grade students about ecology and outdoor living. Every day I would blog about what we were doing and I would upload some photos. I thought a few parents would find this fun to follow along. Little did I know how they would respond.

Here is the math: we took 46 students, which means 46 families could possibly read the blog, if they each checked in 5 times a day that would be 230 "hits" to my blog per day. When I got home and checked my blog's stats I had over 900 hits a day!

What does this mean? Parents want to be connected to their kids -- they loved being able to check in and see that they were up to. I think the fact that we got over a foot of snow dumped on us (in May) helped because they just wanted to know that we were okay. Using a school technology like a blog allows us to be connected in a valuable and important way to the families of our students.

Check out my Classroom Blog to see for yourself.

Student Blogging for Assessment

Recently my 5th grade students finished their blogging project about the Renaissance.

After meeting with the 5th grade team earlier in the year we decided that we wanted more from the unit on the Renaissance than just a test. We wanted to incorporate not only 21st Century Skills but also 21st Century Assessment.

To ensure that the students would be safe online with their blogs, they were only allowed to use their student ID numbers instead of names since all of these students are only in elementary school. The students very quickly learned each others ID numbers when commenting on the classroom blogs. "Hey 48392, this is 38291, I really liked the photo you used of Leonardo da Vinici's Mona Lisa, it was nice and clear."

We were very surprised at how quickly the students picked up the art of blogging like making new posts, adding photos and images, commenting on other's blogs, etc.

What the students enjoyed was the fact that they had made a blog that was being read by many people instead of just their teacher (like most projects). When we got our first comment from someone in Australia students really stepped up the quality of their work.

It is just amazing that our students are growing up in a time where they have a voice that they can literally share with the entire world.