Day 10 - Blogging Your Class Published 2006-12-23 under 12DaysOfCollaboration, collaboration

Yesterday, I discussed the power of groups (forums) for creating a collaborative environment where students can respond to a message created by a teacher or student. In that post, I mentioned the similarity between blogs and groups, and indicated that one should not dwell on which is the best tool. Today, I will advocate blogging as the clear choice for capturing your class.

I started talking about the power of blogging in the curriculum back in early '04 and I still cite the fantastic work of Darren Kuropatwa and his AP Calculus, Pre-Calculus (11) and Pre-Calculus (12) classes. Darren has his students post a summary of the topics covered in class on the class blog. One student is the "scribe" for the day and posts his/her notes on the class. This provides a wonderful documentation of the class as well as a great exercise for the scribe as he/she is asked to publicly explain what was discussed in class that day. Darren also has students reflect on the unit/chapter in "Blogging on Blogging" or BOB.

Because the blog is public, students take the job of scribe very seriously and even try to out do other scribes. The quality of their work is outstanding and students get a kick out of knowing that others (across the globe) are reading their post.

There are numerous sources for information on blogging, but one that I just stumbled upon is by Robert Jones - his "Blogging for Beginners" series. Robert (aka Mr. Jones) came to my attention at breakfast with a friend - Mr. French whose AP Calculus class also blogs. Apparently Mr. Jones posted a comment on the class blog, but the students thought it was just Mr. French posing as a Maths teacher from Scotland. One enterprising student verified Mr. Jones' existence and posted his research.

There is nothing like having an international audience to motivate you to posting the best content as possible.

Tags: digiwalks, 12DaysOfCollaboration, collaboration, blogging

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