Last Thursday when you walked into class the first thing you saw was a post entitled "Student Voices Matter! It was my previous post displayed on a large screen on the wall. You saw first-hand how much your posts meant to the Georgia State students who will one day be teachers themselves. I was also modeling for you the process of blogging. First, you read. Then you think about what you are reading. Then you begin to make connections about what you are thinking and what someone else is writing. Then you might decide to write about what you are reading and even do some linking yourself! And of course you are ALWAYS thinking and learning as you go!
I took little snippits out of the various posts from the GSU students' blogs. I made a link on my post that would go to both your blogs and the GSU blogs. The connections between you and the GSU students were great, wern't they?
Next you began to read the back and forth communications on the screen. You were grinning like cheshire cats as you read the nice responses from GSU on our class weblog. Next I displayed Teachers & Technology which is the class blog I am using with the GSU students. I showed you how I had made links on the side to the GSU student blogs. Then I shared how much fun it was to read what someone had written, create a link to their words, and then respond to what they had said. That's blogging! First you read, then you think, then you begin the process of linking and writing and more thinking! The learning is great! We talked about it and you shared your thoughts. Have I told you lately what good thinkers you are!
Then I gave each of you a GSU student name and you were going to go to their blog and read. Boo hiss! We had technology problems and many of you could not get to the sites. However, since we never like to waste our time in the lab and we do know how to refocus when problems occur, we moved on. We quickly shifted gears and decided to share the day's learning with the GSU students. You were going to help these students learn about blogging. You took on the challenging task of writing about what you were learning.
I say challenging because it is not always easy to explain step-by-step what is actually happening in our classrooms. You worked hard and got some good practice on this skill. We didn't have enough time to do it justice but you made a valiant effort. We'll work some more on these posts.
So you're learning how to find interesting writing, to respond to it by copying some of the words of interest, and then making a link back to the writer. This way you are sharing something you find worthwhile with others. You learned about hyperlinks and added to your knowledge about URLs. It was a day jam-packed with learning and a whole lot of fun.
This coming Thursday we are going to continue linking and learning! Can't wait!