Blog Day 2

We are really into it now. The students have officially blogged twice - three times if you count their first stating the name of the book and why they chose it. It is getting quite involved, actually. Some people are putting pictures on their blog sites, some are posting photos for their profile pics (I won't let them put actual photos of themselves - no identifying elements). We have worked it out so kids can access their blogs anytime on the school computers, so many are going during study halls. I think a lot of students are having some fun with it. I put up a poll on my page to see how they felt about it, and I am anxious to see the results.

There have been a few times that some troubleshooting was needed. There are some comments going up that aren't really "academic." I feel really out-of-control with these; I can't delete them from anyone's blog - the blogger him or herself has to. I am also fighting the problem of spelling, usage, mechanics. Microsoft Word does so much work for people when it comes to spelling etc. It automatically capitalizes the "I"'s, it will automatically correct the spelling on words, it will do things without the typer even realizing it. The composer on the blogs doesn't do that. It is very obvious on the blogs. Frightening.

I have decided to give 10 points per blog. I am keeping track on a chart of page numbers read and points given per blog. I need to come up with an actual rubric for these. My process so far has involved deducting points for not reading the assigned page amounts (1 point), not answering the question (1 point), and mechanics (1-2 points depending upon severity). I have given topics to blog about. The first blog was : give a physical description as well as a description of each character's personality. Does the author use a direct or indirect method of revealing the characterization? The second blog was: describe the setting - include location, time period, and socioeconomic characteristics.

I guess personally I really like this project. It is taking some organization - which I can always use the practice in - and some time to get everything set up, but I like that I'm not lugging around papers. I can actually give kids a lot more feedback - and much more quickly - than if I write it on thier assignments and try to find time to hand the assignments back. I'm getting information about a lot of books that sound good, too. Now if I only had time to read some of them.

B - Day

No...it isn't my birthday. Today B-Day stands for Blog Day. We jumped right in today and started the blogs. For the first class things went smoothly. The blogs were unblocked and then the kids were able to create their accounts. They went through the set-up and were even able to write their first posts. The problem occurred when they went to view their posts...they were blocked. The IT lady had to get each kid's blog URL and un-block it individually. I am finding that I am creating a lot of work for her, but she is a trooper and is helping a lot.
The kids seem to be more impatient than me. I knew we would encounter problems - most likely with the dreaded "ACCESS DENIED" sign popping up on the screen - but the kids had a very low tolerance for this. Maybe they had experienced this too often before and were tired of seeing it. By the time I was finished with the class, I was in a full body sweat from running around to the students and troubleshooting. Really, though, first period went fairly smoothly. Third period was a whole other story. EVERYTHING was blocked, and Mrs. Johnson hadn't changed anything from 1st period, so she didn't know why it wasn't working the same. The kids were frustrated, and I was worried for a while that we wouldn't get any blogs done for this class. Eventually it worked out, though.
I have started to read through the initial posts, and I have tried to comment on each one briefly. I hope I can find the time to do this after each blogging day; I think it will be important for the kids to see that I am keeping up with their posts. It probably won't occur to them that I have 50 of them to read through. The most shocking thing so far has been the horrible punctuation, spelling, grammar, and capitalization in their posts. So many kids don't capitalize the word "I." I know they know they are supposed to - so why don't they? If I failed to capitalize the word "I" in one of my blogs, I probably wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I guess that is why I am the English teacher.

Check out the students' blogs on the left, and you can judge for yourself how this project is working.