EdCamp -- Session 2 -- Audience for Kids

I'm attending my 2nd session of the day at EdCamp Denver:

How do students share their ideas and reach an authentic audience?

Sharing platforms:
-Kid Blog
-Edublogs
-Seesaw -- this can be used as a digital portfolio as well

Ways students can use blogging:
-sharing essays beyond 4 walls (parents, community, etc)
-sharing their understanding of the daily goal and what they learned
-sharing resources they've discovered
-reflections
-answering prompts
-sharing anything they've created (podcasts, 

Importance of students reaching an authentic audience:
https://www.edutopia.org/article/value-of-authentic-audience-monica-burns

Teaching how to blog:
-Citizenship -- how to share and respond appropriately
    -practice on paper --> write a post on paper; gallery walk w/ sticky notes
    -provide exemplars for responses
-Peer review & feedback -- have students use a rubric to guide their responses
-Writing in short, concise paragraphs

Educational Readings

Welcome back from Thanksgiving Break!!

It was extremely restful, long weekend for me. It's always good to spend time with family and friends.

After gorging myself on Thanksgiving dinner, I came across a timely post from A.J. Juliani (co-author of Launch) about what we feed our brains as educators. I can appreciate his approach to reading and writing as it applies to the goal setting strategies many teachers discuss with our students. He reads "at least 25 words a day" which allows him to finish a book a week. The idea of setting small goals resonates with me. I can easily read 25 words a day, and this practice will hopefully push me to read more than that most days.

Also, he provides several ways to find books to read, blogs to follow, and podcasts to listen to. It's a great list if you're not sure where to start when finding materials to learn more about the profession of teaching.

Student Blogs

Here's our students ongoing book review blog: Steck Stars Literature Reviews. Our students love seeing their work being viewed by an authentic audience. I have them type them in Google Docs and share them with me. Then, I copy and paste the final product into one blog site using blogger. Check it out!

Classroom blogs

If you're wanting to setup a classroom blog, here are a few mistakes many teachers make when creating one (this list is according to Richard Byrne's blog, Free Technology for Teachers):

1. Making it optional -- few students will do it if it's optional and parents won't buy in
2. Inconsistency -- start small, like one post a week, and be consistent with the expectations
3. Lack of purpose -- have a reasons for your students to blog (example: weekly learning reflections)
4. Running before walking -- set realistic blogging goals for your students like once a week
5. Creating too many blogs too soon

 Anything you would add to this list?

My first!

I've offiicially succeeded in becoming a blogger! It feels...good? It seems easier to create a blogger account than it is to create a meaningful blog. I guess you'll never now how cold the water is until you jump in. Canonball!!!!

So...I've always wondered how a blog could be used in the library or classroom, so all of you out there in the blogosphere, how are blogs enriching your students? Any examples? Ideas?

Help me:-)