We firstly read and discussed an article from the BBC concerning the topic and thought about the connections that we had learned about in the course to date. Having mind mapped on the board, the students had been tasked, for homework, to investigate different blog sites. The students identified the following sites and evaluated their use for blogging:
- Weebly
- Blogger
- WordPress
- Edublogs
- Blog.com
Most students went for Weebly - one student had previous experience of blogging in CA and used his old account and one gravitated toward WordPress. Blogger was blocked by our school firewall although a subsequent talk with the Elementary School Technology Coach revealed that the 5th Grade are using Blogger for their portfolios. This is an excellent opportunity to look to the revisions that I have done with the school technology plan for ITEC 7410 Instructional Technology Leadership! More to come on that!
Hopefully the students will start getting used to blogging their experiences as part of the reflection process in the MYP. Still looking at how MYP and technology can authentically integrate...but loving the learning process!