Using Blogs to Advance Literacy In A Bilingual Classroom

I recently had the opportunity to represent my district and present at a NASTECH (Nassau Association of School Technology) conference on April 17, 2007. I was asked to talk about using blogs in the early elementary classroom. The following is an excerpt of what I spoke about and a short video that I created with my students to explain why blogging is a great tool.

I am a teacher of a second grade transitional bilingual class. I am also working on my second Master’s in Educational Technology. I noticed that my students’ literacy skills were very poor this year and getting them animated about writing was a struggle. I thought about all of the different web 2.0 tools that I was learning about, but was disappointed to learn that very few teachers used them with early elementary students. Deciding that I would try it anyway, I chose blogging because it simulated journal writing.
A blog is an online publishing tool that enables people to easily publish their loves, passions, dislikes, peeves, discoveries, and insights. The blogs are posted in reverse chronological order and may contain text, images, or multimedia. Not only do the authors (bloggers) post their thoughts and feelings on a web page for the world to view, but blog readers can comment, thus creating a dialogue between the blogger and the community he inhabits. This can lead to an online community of readers and writers.
I researched many different blog sites and found David Warlick’s “Landmark Project-Class Blogmeister” (http://classblogmeister.com ) to be the best for my students. I choose this site because it was specifically designed for classroom use and because of all the student controls that are built in. For example, students and or others who wish to leave comments cannot post anything until the teacher approves it.
After setting up my class blog site, I explained to my students that they were going to keep an online journal. I discussed rules of Internet safety with my students. We talked about personal information. We discussed the dangers of posting too much about ourselves or our families. We discussed the proper use of blogs and about cyber-bullying. This was something completely new and different. The children were very excited.
I named the site “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” and decided that our blog would serve as a resource to help strengthen our literacy skills through self-expression, opinions, and communication of topics that we are learning about and exploring in the classroom.
We have been blogging for about 5 months now, and the students’ literacy skills have improved tremendously. They are taking risks with their writing and many of them are developing a sense of voice. We blog every Friday and my students are eager to share what they’ve learned, read what others have posted, and collaborate with other kids around the world. Some of my students even force their parents to bring them to the library so that they can share their blogs with their families (since most do not own computers).
In the future, I would like to focus on a way to have parents more involved in our class blog. I have many ideas. Stay tuned.

Our First Class Voicethread

My Voki

Get a Voki now!

My Photo Story on Embracing Our Differences

Cognitivism

As an early elementary teacher, what a child brings cognitively to the classroom is important. Being a bilingual elementary teacher, I believe that activating a students prior knowledge is extremely important. Based on the information read, cognitive learning environments focus on helping students take in information in a meaningful way and put it into long-term memory so that it can be easily retrieved. I observed an example of this during a guided reading lesson. The students in a first grade bilingual reading class were about to read a story about shadows. To prepare the students for the story and implant the vocabulary needed to comprehend and decode the story the teacher brought the students outside and let them play with their shadows. While the students were playing and investigating their shadow shapes the teacher implanted and repeated specific vocabulary words that the children were going to find in their reading books. When the students began to read the story the teacher drew on their recent shadow experience. The students were able to comprehend the story because they now had a background experience to draw from.
There are many ways that technology could enhance this lesson cognitively. Instead of using the glossary to find the meaning to vocabulary words some textbook companies are creating etextbooks. These books may include a vocabulary page with mouse over graphics that help students associate the meaning a word with a graphic. Creative teachers can create the same type of resource for their students using an image annotation web 2.0 tool such as Flickr.com. Visual dictionaries, video clips, podcasts, and vodcasts are just a few other ways that teachers can use technology to enhance cognitive thought.
I attended a technology conference about visual literacy that said "We process visuals 60,000 times more than text." However flashing images or showing video clips are not enough to commit information into long term memory. It is through the combination of building background knowledge, getting students excited and involved in what they are learning, using technology and repetition that leads to cognition.

Learning can come from unexpected places!

I knew that by joining TEAM that I would be learning a great deal from the professors, but what I did not expect was to learn from my peers. After speaking to and viewing the blogs and classroom websites of some of my peers I am awed by what I have seen. Maybe because my district is a little "behind the times" when it comes to technology, but I can't believe how my fellow teachers in other districts are using technology in their classrooms. Some of you are doing things with eboards that I never even dreamed about. I love some of the ideas that I've picked up by viewing class websites and can't wait to encorporate them into my website. Just being able to share and collaborate ideas with my peers each week I've picked up a great free site that I never heard of called Photostory. Since then I've shown many teachers in my school what I have learned. I am really glad I decided to take this course.

EEV Workshops

So far I have attented five workshops. They were very informative. I have really learned many diferent and exciting ways to incorporate excel and iMovie into my classroom plans and can't wait to try it out with my kids. The iMovie workshop was great. We learned how to take four minutes of film and transform it with many different tools. I also enjoyed the web 2.0 tools workshop. I learned how to use bubbleshare (a slideshows "to go" tool) to embed a slideshow into my classroom eboard. I also learned about flicker which enables you to annotate a picture, which is great for the students that I teach- which are second language learners. Even though we are only required to attend five, I have signed up for all that I have interests in. These are a great way for those with less experience, like myself, to learn about and "catch up" to others in the class.