The Moss-Free Stone

I wanted to share this new class blog–Science Today. It’s by my geeky science teacher friend, Whitney Isbell. She set the blog up to allow randomly selected students to craft a daily summary of the goings-on in class. We had a couple of hiccups trying to set up student email and accounts. The biggest stumbling block came when we set up student email accounts on ePals. Neither of us realized that ePals blocks all emails that are not from ePals, which prohibited students from receiving blog invitations from Blogger. Undaunted, Whitney set up student accounts with Gaggle, resent the invitations, and was able to set up the accounts.

As I said, this is a new effort, scarcely a week old. However, take note not only of the students’ entries, but their comments, as well. One responder, Abbebe, is not even a current student of Whitney’s. Rather, they are an enthusiastic former student who was exposed to the read/write web the previous year. Other responses not only critique the original posts but add to their content.

This is a very easy way to get students writing and putting more thought and effort into their work, as they focus on their main audience (their classmates). It is also a great way to encourage summarization and note-taking, two essential tools for learning.