Today’s classroom teachers range in age from their early twenties to mid sixties. The younger teachers, “digital natives,” tend to use technology in their classrooms almost without thinking about it. For many of the veteran teachers, or “digital immigrants,” the use of technology for classroom instruction is foreign to them, and many feel, unnecessary for successful instruction and likewise unnecessary for student learning.
In an era when our students are entrenched in the use of various forms of technology on a daily basis, should there be an expectation that all classroom instructors, regardless of their “comfort level,” be literate in and employ technology in the delivery of their lessons? Should school districts require teachers who need it to attend district offered technology training to bring them “up to speed” with technology? Or, should school districts have a “grandfather clause” that allows teachers hired before a certain year to forgo learning how to use technology in their classrooms since they are “close to retiring anyway?”

515 students  Click for some fun audio!

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen, the Caldecott award winning author of many children’s books, could easily add “blog entry” to her list. No matter what form our writing takes, it is still practice, and as the saying goes, “practice makes perfect”, or at least an improvement. Blogging is just another way of practicing. Again, as we have discussed in our class, as technology has evolved, it offers new tools to teachers to engage their students, provide variety, and a forum for interacting as writers. Interacting…I think that is the key.
My fifth grade students so enjoy reading each other’s writing, commenting, editing, and finally sharing their own writing, as well, and seeking feedback. Blogging gives them an opportunity to address all of those elements. I agree with Hunt’s opinion in Ramaswami’s article “The Pros (and a few cons, too) of Blogging,” when he says that for a blog to be valuable as a writing tool, it “should be weaved into other components of a classroom writing program…” and “Blogs should be part of a program that is focused upon building a writing community of students, teachers, and other educators.”
I am envisioning how I can do this in my own classroom. I could use a blog forum rather than students writing in individual journals as a warm up each day. Students could choose which pieces to post each week and could then have an opportunity to receive and offer feedback. Another idea would be to use the blog as a place to respond to literature that we are reading in class or in book club groups. Blogs could conceivably be used as an alternative for “book reports”. We could also use a blog for a character sketch, or in social studies to pretend to be a historical figure, answering questions posed by the other students.
Yes, blogs have great potential for use in my classroom. In room 16 this year, like Jane Yolen, we will be “limbering up,” “toning up,” and “signing up”… for our own classroom blog!

PUT A PICTURE HERE AT THE TOP!

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