Reflecting on Blogging

We again spent the 28th blogging. I wanted to keep going while the interest was high. The first thing I did was showed them how to go back in and edit a previous post. We talked about the importance of categories and students went back to add categories to their posts. Then we looked at some more information about the greenhouse effect and global warming. It is really important for them to have a better understanding of the science behind it.

Once students had looked over the link below(which was in kid-friendly language)
http://www.eo.ucar.edu/kids/green/warming4.htm
they were to write one more post about their understanding of what the greenhouse effect is and how it relates to global warming. As of right now I am only part of the way through grading their posts. My first class is one of my classes with more of the special learners. Clearly they need more help with understanding the concept and more direction with writing their posts. In retrospect I think the next time we blog I will have to give them more detail on what their post should include.

I am really glad I had them write a post on blogging in general because much of what they said about it fit right in with my predictions of how they would feel. They liked that blogs allowed them to share their feelings. Also, that everyone could posts and share at the same time whereas in a normal class dicussion only a few people are able to share. Many also thought it was fun!

It will be interesting to see how the next week goes with blogging. They now have a pretty good understanding of how it works and what is expected. Now what we need to focus on is the debate about global warming!