"What's all the blog about?"

I would love to use blogging in my classroom as a form of assessment.  I think it would be a motivating way to get students to communicate with each other and their teacher about content knowledge. However, I never seem to implement my ideas about blogging with my students. Is it because of my inexperience with blogging? No, I have experience blogging :-) Is it the logistics of the idea? Yes.  These questions enter my thoughts every time I want to set up classroom blogs.

1. How do I set up an account for all my students if we don't have individual student emails set up at my school?
2. How do I monitor everything my student's post?  In the world of cyber-bullies, this can be scary for a teacher.
3. How do I know parents will allow their students' to post work on the Internet?  Are there rules about this? 
4. Will I be able to acquire enough time in the media center to use this as a valuable learning and assessment resource?

This summer I will make it my goal to figure out the answers to these questions.  Hopefully the answers will be ones that will get me one step closer to using blogs with my 7th graders.

The Digital Age and the Neighborhood Library

With more and more readers using 21st century tools such as iTouchs, Nooks, and iPads to grow their reading collections, it makes you wonder what will happen to our beloved public libraries? Will public libraries make the shift into the  digital age and offer "ebooks" for check out?  Will they stand by in denial rooted in the 20th century with their print copies of books?  

Blogger, Audry Watters address this in a recent post for The Read, Write Web; "The American Library Association (ALA) has just released its 2011 Public Library Funding and Technology Access Survey, and among its findings, 67% of public libraries in the U.S. now offer free access to e-books for their patrons."  In light of this survey it looks as if our public libraries are making an effort to survive the onslaught of 21st century technologies that change the way we read books.  

The ALA has set forth a few goals to work towards to make its transition into the digital age smoother and easier.  These goals include working with publishers to make some titles "Always Available," making magazines available for digital checkout, merging area libiaries' collections of "ebooks" for a larger resource, and offering digital checkouts specifically for Barnes and Nobles' Nook. (Watters, 2011).

The new technology resources of the 21st century has changed almost every aspect of our lives from public education, media and news, public safety and even our reading selections.

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Works Cited

Watters, A.  Is This The Tipping Point For E-Books and Libraries?. Retrieved June 27, 2011 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_this_the_tipping_point_for_e-books_libraries.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Back to the Future

~ in response to "How to Manage the Late to the Game Parent" by Holden Clemens

I love the movie "Back to the Future."  I own the trilogy on DVD if anyone would like to borrow it.  Instead of parents using the flux-capacitor to travel back in time to have their students do their missing assignments.  I would like the parents to take a trip back in time before the use of Internet was integrated into the everyday lives of a teacher.  They wouldn't even  have to travel back that far in time.  Maybe early to mid 1990's!   What did we do before the Internet?

There are so many online tools that are used today to help parents keep track of their children's school work.  To list a few: online gradebooks, online assignment calendars, email and online text books.  Even with all these extra online communication tools, there still seems to be "parents late to the game or not at the game all together."

There are many possible explanations for what seems to be these parents' lack of concern.  Perhaps they do not have access to a computer with the Internet.  Maybe they work all the time?  Maybe they do not have the skills to effectively use these online tools? Whatever the case may be, you can only do your best to contact them early and often by phone or "good ole"  traditional letters.

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Works Cited

Clemens, H.  How to Manage the Late the Game Parent.  Retrieved June 27, 2011, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/parental-involvement-holden-clemens?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader