The second article I read was "The Top 20 Teacher Blogs" from Instructor (New York, N.Y.: 1999).
While it is a bit dated, all the sites I checked out were still up, and they were terrific. I loved the first-grade teacher's blog MRS. CASSIDY'S CLASSROOM BLOG classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337), which reaches out to classrooms around the country and the world and interacts with other first-grade students and their teachers. What a great use of a blog.
http://www.sciencefix.com/ is another great blog which incorporates video of science experiments for middle-school students.
Also, in reading and digging around, I learned what a backchannel is--a new term for my toolbox, lol. I'm sure most of you already knew about this, but I didn't. For those of you who might not know, it's all the responses that are happening when someone is speaking--basically all the talk in the room other than what the speaker is saying. Apparently this is getting pretty big at tech conferences.
It blows my mind to see how effective blogs can be especially with younger children.....
ReplyDeleteI too did not know about the backchannel! That is very interesting! :)
Ok the teacher's blog was awesome. They did a great job having pictures, videos, journaling and other links all on one page. If parents were to see your blogging site and see how their student is doing in class it could just be that motivator for parents to be more involved in their child's life.
ReplyDeleteTori--thanks for that--I'm glad I wasn't the only one who didn't know what "backchannel" means.
ReplyDeleteTori and Nicki--Isn't that blog cool??? She's obviously been working on it a long time and it is so useful! If I were a parent of a student in that class I would feel very connected. It must take a lot of extra time, though.