This week's session at J.H. House was filled with meetings, from the instructional technology specialist (ITS), to the principal, to the counselor, and finally the General Mills representative.
Meeting 1
First, I met with Ms. Meeler (ITS). I showed her a mock weblog I had put together simulating how the Biz Pal/Student project might look. This way she could visualize the back & forth posting between the students & General Mills mentor. We looked at the layout. This design includes the date at the top and a title. Actually, the letters back and forth between student and mentor don't necessarily lend themselves to titles as they usually contain several topics. Even so, we are leaning towards including the title. The reasons are (1) to give students practice writing and (2) it's nice for readers to see the topics included on the TypeList on the sidebar. It provides a "heads-up" for readers to have to make quick decisions on what they'd like to read. Having only the date at the top of a post is too broad and would not pique interest for our readers.
Next, I reviewed the Weblog features we had discussed last week. Ms. Meeler is a quick study and grasps the info quickly.
Then, we brainstormed names for the Biz Pal project. We decided on "J. H. House and General Mills Mentor Project" for the parallel blog that Ms. Meeler will create. (All this is, of course, assuming the project gets the green light from General Mills.) The student blogs would be something like........
Jose & Ms. Jennifer's Corner. We'll be using first names only and ending up with names like corner, deck, desk, den, spot, world, etc. If you can add to this list, send some possible names for the ending part on our comments section. We plan to let the students pick the ending part of the name from a list. We like the idea of keeping it kind of consistent in this manner. Grades 3-5 will participate.
Finally, Ms. Meeler and I explored the inner workings of TypePad together and printed the online manual for her.
Meeting 2
Next stop was the principal's office. Mrs. Hooper posted her thoughts, "I Think I'm Going to Like Blogging." She will be working on her post on honesty later and will publish it early next week. Last week, we had talked about introducing weblogs to the school counselor. She is pretty good with technology and might be interested in participating. So, off to the counselor's office!
Meeting 3
I pulled up a chair in the counselor's office and gave her the URL of the principal/s weblog. I told her to read it from the bottom up. She said, "Oh, this is just like reading a continuing email." Then as she read, she got excited, and exclaimed, "This is so good." Laughter followed. I tried to contain myself as she was getting hooked. All the signs were there. She read a couple of comments people had left on the blog. I said, "Let me show you how to comment." Then, I got a phone call and when I walked back in her office she was commenting away. The comment was becoming like a post - I love it! She really enjoyed the post on school pride, and to say she was intrigued with all this is an understatement. I did a quick tour with her through Weblogs: The Possibilities Are Endless! (I have really found this information site handy to use!) She is going to explore some more weblogs and think about the focus she wants for her weblog. We will meet again next week and set up her weblog! Hooray!
Meeting 4
The last meeting of the day was with Linda, the General Mills representative. Ms. Meeler and I conducted a quick tour of weblogs with her. Mainly we stuck with the principal's blog, this blog, and the mock BizPal blog I had created. Linda asked excellent questions, saw the benefits and was interested. All the emails from General Mills in the email project for the past two years have gone through Linda for a final check. The emails here at J.H. House have gone through the ITS. In elementary school settings, these parameters are necessary. Wish it could be otherwise, but it gives us the chance to make writing the focus, teach our students responsible use of weblogs, and pave the way for students to blog in worthwhile ways in the future. So our thinking here is that we may make Linda the author of all the blogs from General Mills, Ms. Meeler the author of all the blogs from J. H. House. Then all the other mentors and the students would be junior authors. This way final checks could be done on both sides. If any of you out there have used TypePad, let me know if you think this is a good approach or if there is another way to achieve the same thing.
There's just one hitch to all this. General Mills does not give its employees internet access across the board so Linda is going back to the tech department to see if there are work arounds. She'll be back in touch. We're hoping they can figure a way because we think this project is great and needs a green light! I understand why companies don't give Internet access across the board to employees, especially if it is not really needed for their job but it gave me pause. I'd like to see a project like this come to light. In the feedback from last year's project they wanted the communications between General Mills and J. H. House to reach to others in the classroom and it would be great to see more having the opportunity to share the writings and then comment or even post as another junior author! I'll keep you updated!
Ms. Meeler and I are going to test drive the roles of junior author this week.