What a week I’ve had! All of my classes are fully immersed with our blogging, and everything is rolling full steam ahead. I was sifting through my Google Reader account the other night, reading students blogs, and I was blown away by how quickly most of my students are learning the basics. I simply make small suggestions in class and within a few days they are doing what I ask. They are adding links and pictures to make their posts more dynamic. They are writing on a variety of topics that I never dreamed of “assigning.” I am seeing spontaneous poems, songs, short stories, posts on sharks, National Geographic shows, and much much more. It makes me wonder what would have happened to all of these ideas and thoughts when the kids didn’t have this outlet?  They are writing for the sake of writing. They are starting to comment on other blogs. They are trying to reach out, find an audience, make a connection; they are communicating. I never could have dreamed it would be going so well so early.

All of my classes have also created Google Accounts, so they could each set up a reader and start subscribing to other student blogs. We have made initial contact with a few classrooms from around the world, while others are still forthcoming. If you have a classroom that would like to connect with us, please send them here.

I want to give them some time to build a foundation, but I am looking forward sending them over to Paul Allison’s Youth Twitter in the coming weeks, as well as trying out Voicethread, maybe some Vokis, and Flickr.

The second drafts of our Labor Art poems have been turned in, and we will soon be ready to post them on the wiki and start to think about how we will record them for oral presentation on our blogs. Perhaps Voice Thread or a simple mp3 recording. Any ideas?

In other news, I presented a session on Web 2.0 and 21st century to a small group of parents last week and they loved it. They seemed both enthusiastic about the possibilities that these tools could have for their kids education and eager to learn more. It was very encouraging. I even had a student begrudgingly attend with his mom, but he spontaneously wrote this the next day. I am hoping that some of the parents who attended are reading now and will muster up the courage to leave a comment here and join the network I mentioned in my session.

I am facilitating the first session of our teachers’ blogging club, in hopes that I can get a few teachers blogging for themselves, so they can learn the basics and truly understand the power of these tools, in hopes that they will use them in their classrooms soon. I can feel a bit of momentum building on our campus.

That’s it for now. I have blogs and poetry to read. If you want to see for yourself the power of student blogging come join us here. We are still learning, but the passion and enthusiasm is growing and that is the most important step to becoming a writer.