Last week I met with Mrs. Hooper, principal, and Ms. Meeler (instructional technology specialist) at J.H.House. I have high hopes for this school weblog project. The principal is up and going on her blog, Principal's Quest. ! Focusing on character education will have her writing and setting a fantastic example for her staff and for the students. The plan is to get the teachers and students involved with her blog initially through the commenting feature. This will set the stage for further blog development later.
I reviewed blogging "how-to's" with Mrs. Hooper. Then she moved over to a computer and began blogging her thoughts. This past week she blogged her first post on school pride and it is terrific! Go make a comment and share a time you felt school pride or saw it in action at a school.
As Mrs. Hooper was blogging, I worked with Ms. Meeler. This is her first year as an instructional technology specialist. She is enthusiastic, eager to learn, and sees the potential in weblogs. I took her on a tour of weblogs. She is going to follow-up by following the many links on Weblogs: The Possibilities Are Limitless! We talked at length about what she would like to focus on, on her blog. She's thinking about writing a parallel blog to run along side of the Biz Pal project we are hoping to convert to blogs. Tomorrow we will be meeting with General Mills.
We spent some time on the managment aspects of all this. Here are some of our thoughts at this point.
1- What's the best way to introduce this to teachers?
We thought we would go slow in this area. First, have the principal's blog up and going, followed by the ITS (instructional technology specialist). Get teachers and students reading these by getting them to comment on these blogs.
2- What's the best way to manage commenting with students?
We think we want to keep the commenting where people have to give their name and email address. That presents a problem where students are concerned - they do not have email addresses, for the most part. Should we have them use the teacher's email address and sign their own names? How is the best way to set this up in the classroom? Allow a certain time in the classroom, send them to the ITS at a certain time and use her email address?? Anybody out there have ideas?
Mrs. Hooper plans to post her thoughts tomorrow. I plan to post more of my thoughts later. I think we're off to a good start!