John Paulding Elementary

The first blog site I came across happens to be from Birmingham Alabama. Mrs. Caldwell set up her blog in order to integrate what she taught in the classroom with technology. The students in her Senior English class at Mount Brooks High School were required to post twice a week to help them gather their thoughts on what they had read. That way the in class discussions would be much more meaningful. Mrs. Caldwell would also put notes up on her site and would discuss things such as how to become a better reader of plays and how to analyze characters

in literature. One of her posts involved her students looking at several cartoons she had posted and choosing the one that best represented satire. The correct answer is the picture on the left! I felt that the class blog provided a more informal way for students to voice their opinions on what they had read. It also helped prepare them for bogging in college which is becoming so very common.

The second blog I chose comes out of New York State. The school is called John Paulding and the teacher is named Mrs. Chulla. Mrs. Chulla is not working with high school seniors but with first graders. One of the blog projects she had them do was to write a short little poem which was then placed on the class blog. While the students had a lot of guidance posting their poems they were still being exposed to the internet and computers. The longer these children practice with the blogs the more independent they will become. The site also serves as a message board so that parents can know what has been going on in class and what their children have been doing. This allows the parents to be involved in their child’s classroom even if they can’t always be there physically.

Links

Mrs. Chulla's Blog: http://tufsdblogs.org/chulla/

Mrs. Caldwell's Blog: http://mrscaldwell0.edublogs.org/