Members present: Scott, Amanda, RoJean, Megan, Julie
We began our conversation with an read aloud from Scott from Bill Bryson's Thunderbolt Kid. We learned how to make Lincoln Logs white.
One loop of conversation had to do with punctuation on blogs: does it matter or not? Julie was adamant about correct punctuation, and Amanda chimed in with, "If the punctuation is off, I'm distracted by wanting to correct it." Ultimately, should we be telling our students the importance of public presentation? Should they be treating blogs as personal writing or public writing.
Professional blogs vs. personal blogs? How closely does one follow these journals?
We wonder how Susan keeps up with all the blogs! Scott suggested that it's not so much about "grading" what they're doing, it's about giving students the skill and opportunity to create. Megan asked, " Again, what knowledge are we measuring?" Perhaps our role is to teach them appropriate public/private blogging. RoJean talked about younger students taking things literally, and how carefully we need to craft our own language when introducing blogs.
Scott loves the opportunity that blogging gives the students for inspiration. In some sense, it offers the old fashioned "free writing" type of writing where the point is finding the idea as you are writing. The modern twist is that other people can comment and bring new ideas to the original. Cool.
re: "We wonder how Susan keeps up with all the blogs!"
ReplyDelete-- I recommend using an RSS Reader such as Digg Reader (This is how I see when PLC groups add new posts as well). One can organize blogs into folders and get updates when a new post is added.
if interested, you can read more here: http://www.maclife.com/article/reviews/digg_50_digg_reader_review