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My 7th grade Reading students and I are featured in a recent article in Edutopia, “High Tech Reflection Strategies Make Learning Stick.” The article is about the power of getting students to honestly reflect on their learning using new technology tools, like weblogs and podcasts. Sam, one of my 8th grade students from last year, was also interviewed for the article. Sam is one of a few student bloggers from last year who have continued to blog on the blogs we set up in my Language Arts classroom.

Here’s a quote from the article from one of my current 7th grade students reflecting on how her attitude toward writing has changed this year: “Before I started this class, writing was my enemy, but now I like writing. Writing all this makes me feel that I know more.”

In other developments, my 7th grade Reading class is finishing up production on their claymation projects. Check out the first completed film from Anthony and Jonathan, “Super Dude and the Plot Diagram.” This week, students will complete their claymations, embed them into their blogs, and then write reflections about the whole process.

My middle school students and I share many of the projects we do in class via the World Wide Web. (check out the new LF10 Video!) Opening up the classroom and sharing student work is one of my favorite parts of teaching. In this new age we live in, it’s important to model appropriate ways of sharing content online. Students become more motivated when their work is shared online. The Internet is our new classroom bulletin board.

Last week, I compiled some of the stats from our various projects over 2008 into an annual report as part of Dan Meyer’s Annual Report challenge. I collected as much data as I could on the projects my students and I worked on in 2008. Here are some highlights: Our collective hit count for our various projects in 2008 was over 40,000. We collaborated with over 900 k-12 students from across the globe on different projects. There were over 400 blog posts written about our different projects on technorati.com. We also created tons of content: more than a hundred blogs, over 50 movies, 2 full-length hip-hop albums, published two books, and recorded many podcasts.

In my 7th grade Reading class, each student is required to read an independent novel (or two) each quarter. Although they get some class time to accomplish this, most of the reading is done outside of class. Over the last couple of weeks, students have been recording and posting short podcasts about the books they are reading.

For the most recent podcast, I gave them the option of imagining they were recording a commercial for their book, after it was turned into a movie. They could also bypass the podcast all together, and instead write a book report on their weblogs. A few students opted to do this. It’s nice have as many options as possible when asking them to respond to the books they are reading.

You can listen to all the podcasts on our class homepage. The students also embedded their podcasts into their blogs and wrote reflections about the whole process. Check out Binyam’s excellent post outlining all the steps involved in making a podcast. Binyam choose to read the Hobbit for his independent reading novel.

I hope to continue podcasting with students throughout the year, so stay tuned for more. The podcast used at the top of this post was recorded by Johana.

Here are my nominations for the 2008 Edublog Awards:

Best Teacher Blog: Songhai Concepts. H Songhai is a high school media teacher at an alternative school in Philadelphia. He has been quietly blogging for years showcasing the many ways he uses new technology to engage his students.

Best Educational Use of a Social Networking Service: YouthVoices.net. Paul Allison and friends, with support from the National Writing Project, have created a new home for the Youth Voices project.

Best Educational Use of Audio: Teachers Teaching Teachers is a webcast run by Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim. They invite classroom teachers and students to talk about ways they’re using technology in the classroom. They also do a great job of archiving each weeks’ show and making the audio available as podcasts.

Best Individual Blog: One of the founders of the Students 2.0 movement, Arthus, blogged through much of 2008 on his blog, Newly Ancient. He has since stopped blogging there, but I think the work he did over that time is worthy of an Edublogs Award because of his unique perspective as a student writing about education technology.

Best Resource Sharing Blog: Silvia Tolisano’s blog, Langwitches, is a great resource blog for teachers looking to integrate technology and new media.

Best Educational Wiki: Digitally Speaking is a wiki created by Bill Ferriter that offers a roadmap for using Web 2.0 in the classroom. It’s a great resource for any teacher whose looking to use blogs, wiki’s and other Web 2.0 tools with their students.

Best New Blog: Jabiz Raisdana is the author of The Intrepid Classroom, where he writes passionately about technology and teaching.

This post is a slight deviation from what I usually write about: student work. However, I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize a few of the many voices on the web who have influenced me in some way. Thanks.

We recorded a quick song in class the last few days about helping verbs. CLICK HERE to listen to the song, or to download it. Hopefully, this will help everyone remember all twenty three helping verbs. We have a quiz on these Wednesday and Thursday.

We’ll record many songs throughout the year. To hear the songs we did last year visit my Podcast Page. That’s where I store all the audio we do in class.
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I’ve recently relocated to the Washington, DC area from Virginia Beach. I’m a secondary English teacher with two years of experience teaching 6th grade English at Brandon Middle School in VBCPS. I’m writing this post to summarize the ways I’ve used technology to teach my students. When I interview in the DC area schools this summer, (soon, I hope?) I will refer them to this post so they can preview all the wonderful work my students have done.

During my first year, I started an after-school online magazine called Brandon’s Online Magazine. Students picked their own topics and wrote about a subject of their choosing. For example, Christian wrote movie reviews on his page called Movies. Roni posted her artwork on her Online Art Gallery, and also wrote an ongoing story called Ninja of the Night. Check out THIS VIDEO STREAM from Brian’s page about roller coasters called The Drop Zone.

We also created an online mp3 zine (podcast) to accompany the online magazine. All our shows can be heard on our Podcast Page. You should definitely listen to Podcast #5. Funny stuff! After two years, the online magazine had over 11,000 hits, with around 40 writers from three grade levels.

The experience with the online magazine prompted me to spend most of last summer creating a classroom blogging template. This year, each one of my students had their own blog. We used the student blogs as online writing notebooks. The blogs energized my students’ writing. We created a true community of writers. By the end of the year, we had over 4,000 hits to the student weblogs. Our readers were the students, their parents, other relatives and administrators. That’s 4,000 times that someone else read my student’s writing besides me.

In addition, my students and I wrote grammar songs about the eight parts of speech. I recruited a few students to help me write some hip-hop rhymes for some of the songs. Here are the songs we did this year:
Direct Objects mp3
Subject Pronouns mp3
Mariachi Subject Pronoun mp3
Adverbs mp3

Our work has been recognized in a Swedish magazine, The Philadelphia Enquirer, Edutopia.org, and Weblogg-ed.com. Many school districts and universities across the country link to our sites as positive examples of how to safely use new technology in the classroom.

“The more you write, the more you discover your subject, your world, yourself.” Donald Murray

Hello. Welcome to my demonstration about using weblogs in the classroom. I’m a 6th grade English teacher at Brandon Middle School in Virginia Beach, VA. This presentation is part of the Third Annual Technology Retreat, sponsored by the VAIS in Richmond, VA.

My demonstration is divided into three parts: safety, the educational value of blogs, and becoming familiar with a basic weblog tool. I’ve also posted a few useful links for anyone who is interested in learning more about this subject.

Part I. Safety

Safety is my first concern. I’ve spent the last two years using blogs with my 6th grade students, and haven’t had any problems. When set up correctly, blogs can be used safely in the classroom. Here are a few tips:

1. Do not allow comments.
2. Protect students’ identities.
3. Only allow students to access their own blogs by setting up individual passwords. As a result, they become responsible for any inappropriate content. Make this a zero-tolerance policy.
4. Closely monitor student blogs. Ask parents to sign permission slips authorizing blog use.

Part II. Why Weblogs?

There are many reasons to use blogs in the classroom. Here are a few:

1. With blogs, everyone gets to experience the thrill of seeing their words published. Students suddenly have a built-in audience. So far this year, we’ve had more than 3,500 hits to our Student Weblogs. We’ve also had more than 9,000 hits to our Online Magazine since October of 2004. The readers are parents, relatives, administrators, teachers, and the students themselves. Class weblogs truly create a community of readers and writers.
2. Weblogs update the classroom writing format, and offer an efficient way to organize student writing. All work is neatly archived in a clean and easily accessible format. Blogs are the new turbo-charged writing folders.
3. It’s fun. Students enjoy writing on their blogs.

Part III. Let’s Try it.

1. I’ve created 25 blogs to use for my presentation. This is the same type of blogging template that I use for my Student Weblogs.
   Here’s the link to our Presentation Blogs. I hope you don’t mind being an insect for the afternoon.
2. CLICK HERE to log into your practice blog.
3. Please follow the directions on the handout.
4. Writing Prompt: Please take a few minutes to post to your practice blog about one or two interesting things you’ve learned at this technology retreat.

Some useful educational blog links:
Weblogg-ed.com
Why Weblogs?
K12 Blogging Techniques
Edublog Insights

Will Richardson, who runs Weblogg-ed.com, has recently published a book entitled, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. It’s a very informative and helpful book for anyone who wants to learn more about using this technology with their students.

Hello, everyone. The district has decided to unblock both our Student Blogs and our Online Magazine. That’s great news. Our next Online Magazine meeting is this Thursday. I think it’s time we have our own official club T-shirt. Any ideas? In other news, all our grammar mp3 songs can be downloaded from our Podcast Page. Have you heard our Direct Object mp3 yet?

The painting above is by Sigmar Polke.

This photo is from the SOHO spacecraft. To see more images of the sun, check out the official SOHO Gallery. Neat stuff.

Anyone like roaches? Last week, Bell 1, aka the Ocean, and Bell 6, aka Polar Climates, did a little reseach about these amazing creatures. Everyone did a post on their Class Blogs summarizing facts they found about roaches from Yucky.com. By the way, our Student Weblogs have been coming along very well. I’m amazed at how the students have taken to their in-class blogging. My students are growing as writers this year, and it’s obvious to anyone who takes a look at any of the Student Weblogs.

In case anyone missed our various grammar songs we’ve recorded this year, here they are:
Direct Objects mp3
Subject Pronouns mp3
Adverbs

You can also hear them on our Podcast Page. This is where I put all the audio we do in class. Thanks for checking in, and please take a moment to read through our Student Weblogs. And while you’re at it, check out our Class Book Wiki, and our Online Magazine. We have had over 10,000 hits to our various weblogs since I set them all up. Most of those hits are from teachers, parents, administrators, and the students themselves. With our class blogs, everyone gets a chance to be a published writer.

Our work has been recognized in a Swedish magazine, The Philadelphia Enquirer, Edutopia.org, and Weblogg-ed.com, just to name a few. Many school districts and universities across the country link to our sites as a positive example of how to safely use blogs in the classroom.

It’s great to work for a district like VBCPS that allows teachers to use the newest technology to promote student learning. This has been a great year. My students continue to amaze me with their writing. It has been a lot of fun for me, and hopefully for them. We are creating a true community of writers through our weblogs, and showing students firsthand how to use this new technology in an appropriate way.

See everyone Tuesday! Mr. Mayo

The six paintings shown above are part of a small collection put together from Ms. Watson’s Art Club. The Art Club is selling the collection of cards (w/ envelopes) for $12.00. They are raising money for a trip to NYC this summer. They need to raise a lot of money to make the trip happen. The collection includes 8 original paintings by students from Brandon Middle School. Each artist is mentioned on the back of the individual cards.

If you would like to buy a collection of the cards come by room 904 with $12.00, or stop by and see Ms. Watson in the art room. The cards are beautiful, and one-of-a-kind, plus it’s for a worthwhile cause! To have them mailed to you, send a check for $14.00 to Brandon Middle School, attention Ms. Watson. We will mail you the collection of cards promptly. If you do send a check in the mail please include an e-mail address. As soon as we receive your check, we will e-mail you to let you know the collection of cards is shipping. If anyone has any questions about the cards, please E-MAIL ME. My goal is to sell 25 sets of these cards for the Art Club. It’s really a great deal. So everyone, let’s help the Art Club make it to NYC.

In case you didn’t notice, Kirsten dropped her hamster, Peaches, off at school today. Kirsten was nice enough to donate her hamster to the school because she can’t take it with her when she moves. Mrs. Almer, the librarian, is adopting Peaches as the library mascot. Peaches was a little nervous today, but that’s to be expected.

Lastly, our Direct Object mp3 is done and ready to be downloaded. It turned out well. To hear all the songs we’ve made so far this year check out our Podcast Page. That’s where I put all the audio we do in class.
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