Memoirs of my Class Blog.

My Class Blog
I began my class blog at the beginning of 2009 with Edublogs. It was a steep learning curve for me. Each evening I poured over Edublog video tutorials and written guides. I signed up for the class Edublogs challenge in March of 2009.  This was a great choice as I learned from what others were doing, and I could ask questions of other people.

In the beginning, I had wanted to blog for two major reasons.  A) To communicate with parents and to share with them some of the things we were doing in the classroom. B) To have a place to publish writing the students were doing.  I signed up the students as users on the blog and they were able to log on from home and draft posts.  I soon found C) To locate resources in a central area, another reason to blog.

As 2009 developed I began to see that blogging was also connecting our class to other classrooms around the globe.  This was still low key, as we built up our skills, but it was great.  I found a few class blogs in New Zealand and I unashamedly scrolled their blogs for ideas and to  find out what we could do.  We tried a little pod-casting as well.  In about October 2009 I set some of the students up with their own blogs.

In 2010 I still had many of the same students in the class, I used the students who had already set up blogs to set up more students with blogs.  Now that meant the class blog changed somewhat.  Its main role became more a place where I alerted students to new tools, I alsol continued to share things so that parents could have a window in.  2010 saw far more interaction with other classes through blogs.  We connected with a class in Israel, which was both interesting and exciting.  We skyped with a class in Australia. We continued to take part in the Edublogs challenges.  I was able to use other class blogs to teach and discuss. A case in point was the commenting video that Mrs Yollis' class made.  As we saw quality work such as this video coming from other classes I wanted to involve students more. I began to develop video making skills with them.

2011 has dawned and again I am in the process of setting up students with their blogs.  I now present homework on  a page on the blog.  This year I want to involve the students in making quality videos, to mainly share with their parents what they are learning.  These will be shared on the class blog.  Students no longer post on the class blog, they have their own.  However I share the best of the week on the class blog. My google reader feed also shows on the class blog showing the latest student posts.  We are taking part in the Edublogs challenge again. I will probably use more polls on my blog this year.  Part of the class blog is that the journey keeps on going, and change happens!