Tuesday, November 28, 2006

The excitement of receiving comments

One of our assignments throughout the semester has been to maintain a blog about our pre-service teaching experiences. Prof. Nussbaum-Beach has also encouraged us to get our students blogging. Thus far, I have been somewhat skeptical on the idea, as it seems logistically challenging to implement. However, the more I maintain my own blog, the more benefits I come across to blogging. The main aspect of blogging that I find increasingly exciting is receiving comments from other educators across the nation. Although this has not happened very often, the times that it has happened has motivated me to write again. Furthermore, other educators' comments have led me to new ideas.

With that said, I think the excitement I receive from other educators' feedback, could also be very motivating for students. Initially, I thought that students may not care who is reading their blog. However, I find myself checking my blog just to see if I received comments. I can only imagine that elementary-aged students would be ten times more excited to receive comments!

Unfortunately, my cooperating teacher did not seem very keen on the idea of blogging with our third graders. However, perhaps I can warm her up to the idea by providing her with student examples of blogging...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post. I linked to you and quoted you over on my blog.

Sheryl
http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/

IMC Guy said...

When I started my blog a few weeks ago, I didn't know what to expect. When I received my first comment, I was very excited. I think the students will also have that same sort of feeling when they receive comments, especially when it's from someone they don't know.

I tried blogging with some sixth graders last year with mixed success. I only saw these students once a week so it was hard for me to follow up on things. If I saw them daily, I think I could get them into the routine more easily. Another part of the problem was that our district has most blog sites blocked and we had to use a site that I didn't think was that good. I think there's great potential for students and the use of blogs.