Digital Storytelling session with David Jakes

Hi. I’m at Edubloggercon07 here at NECC. Below please find my notes. They are rapidly typed and this is my first attempt at conference blogging so forgive me if they’re no good or need to change in some way. My thoughts are in all caps and were type during the moment.

Creating a competitve student voice with david jakes

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Twitter In The Classroom

I tried to leave a comment on David Warlick’s redesigned blog, but alas it wasn’t accepted or worthy or something, so I’ll post here instead. David wondered whether he should put a “Twitter-like” app on Class Blogmiester - and I say do it (of course I’m not the one doing the programming).

I do several activities that require students to write short “notes” to each other (I blogged about it here). Its fun, it promotes writing as a fun activity, it fosters editing skills, each “note” is short but when you add up all the writing students do in 5 to 30 minutes it is pages. Anything that promotes writing is aces with me. My kids beg me, offer me money bribes … er… um … seem so excited by these activities that they MIGHT offer me bribes ; ), to play what they consider games. I’m sure that smarter teachers than I will come up with even better activities and uses for Twitter.

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Comments from the second graders

Friday was my second session with the second graders. They are really blowing my mind. I provided links on the class blog back to the comments they had gotten in response to the comments they had written the week before. It takes them a while to type in these URL’s. They are commenting away! After a quick review they got right down to it, many finishing several comments. I found out that one of the students has her own blog. Her 12 year old sister made the blog for her. When she was making her comment she included the url for her blog. Miss Neville and I talked to her and explained why it would not be a good idea to include the link to her personal blog. Mrs. Neville has written to the parents about the blogs but there has not been time to talk about it. I wouldn’t want to give out her blog link unless her parents gave an OK. Now she said her mom worked with her on the blog. That’s great but this just underscores what we have all been talking about. It is absolutely imperative that we enter their world and talk about issues. There’s probably lots of kids around that have blogs but no guidance. Kids are inclined to just write everything. They just haven’t thought about it. I think they would respond well to guidance there. I know all the elementary kids I have worked with always add so much to the conversations. Both student and teacher learn so much. Take a look at their comments - the more I work with kids on blogs the more avenues I see for learning and expanding their thinking and writing through comments. Here we go again with the possiblities!

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