Looking for Student “Blogging”

At the risk of riding into another semantic train wreck, I’m looking for a couple of good examples of student blogging. Blogging as in writing that has “Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked [to] and written [about] with potential audience response in mind.” (Was that really almost four years ago?)

I put up a couple of Tweets looking for examples, and while many folks were more than helpful in providing me with posts to look at (thanks to all who offered), none of them fit the bill, somehow. Much of the writing was good if not excellent. And most had a link or two to sources. But it felt too report-ish, not “connective” enough somehow.

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Summer Reading Update

I’ve been quiet in my post Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows daze.  I promised myself I can re-read the entire series again once I finish my summer reading.  I have three books to go: The Return of the Native, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I’ve read most of the last two, so in a pinch, I can skip up to the part I’ve not read if I have to.  I am working on the senior seminar class I’m teaching next week, and I am excited about the way it’s shaping up.  I’m likely to be quiet next week as I will be working hard on this course.  I don’t imagine I’ll be very active at the UbD wiki next week, either.

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What I?m Reading

If you haven’t happened upon Nick Senger’s blog Teen Literacy Tips, you need to check it out. Nick provides valuable content in every post. I am subscribed to his RSS feed through Bloglines, and I invariably bookmark his new posts so I can return to them when I have time (what’s that?).

I recently finished Making Classroom Assessment Work by Anne Davies (read the first edition rather than the updated second, which I linked). I read it as part of Blackboard Online class I took through a local public school system. Frankly, not much new here to anyone who has read Understanding by Design. If I can be allowed to vent for a minute, the reason I took the course in the first place is that I need six more SDU’s (PLU’s or whatever you call them where you live). I submitted my transcripts and all the necessary information to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, but they would not accept anything I had done since about 2004. I suppose I can understand why they might not want to accept professional learning I have participated in at my own school, even if I thought it was a valuable experience; however, I do not understand why they wouldn’t accept Mel Levine’s Schools Attuned. I worked extremely hard to earn the 4.5 PLU’s I earned for that course. I didn’t work a tenth as hard to earn the 2 PLU’s I just earned for reading Anne Davies’ book. If I had known Georgia was not going to accept the credits, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to finish the course online last year. Lesson learned. I will simply take a two-credit course online each year to meet my recertification requirements. At least I should then be assured that my courses will count for something. I have a non-renewable certificate that is good until the end of June, by which time I will have earned those six credits.

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Bow Street Runner

Bow Street Runner is a series of very interactive online video games portraying crime and crime-fighting in eighteenth-century London. You can find the Walkthrough here to all five episodes. It accompanies a British television series, and is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

It’s actually quite an extraordinary game on a number of levels. It’s also very realistic. That realism makes it very inviting to use in a World History class. However, it’s so graphic in its depiction of life in the “underbelly” that I’m a hesitant to put a link to it on my website, or to use it with my students.

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