I have been very lucky to be able to work at
a technology rich school. I have enough laptops, Ipads, and desktops that each
student can be using a device without sharing in all classes. That being said,
safety and security are at the forefront of our minds at all times. If a
student accesses social media at a base school such as Facebook, it may be
frowned upon or possibly encouraged depending on the school. At the JDC, if a
student accesses Facebook or Twitter he may be able to post if anyone turned
him in or even try to get someone to help him escape. Because of this, we have
a SYNC program in every room that projects each laptop on the Whiteboard so I
can see what sites students are visiting at all times.
I have tried many
different interactive computer based projects. I use Fakebook quiet often because
the students are familiar with the layout and it has so many examples already
for them to use. I like this site primarily because students can then write on
each other’s Walls when they are done designing and creating their Fakebooks. I
have also used Kidblog with them which
is very easy to use and free. I used
Kidblog as an opener every day first quarter. We would go over a famous quote
as a class and then students would blog about what it meant to them and any
connections they made. It was going really well for the first month and then we
had a few new intakes who would only write with emoticons, I took those off the
toolbar and they began communicating unit to unit about topics not school
related. I ended up having to shut it down. However…… if I go to a base school
next year, I think it would work well with some serious monitoring.
I follow one blog
religiously. Ken Halla is a teacher at Hayfield High School in Fairfax County
and has a paperless classroom. His blogs are usually very short but he gives
you some really good resources and I am all about that!!!! Check out his World
History Blog here.
Do you use Blogs in your Classroom? If so how? What works and what doesn't?
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