When I saw this lesson added I got pretty excited and jumped all over it! One of the things I reflected on last year,
after participating in the Cool Tools for the first time, was that I wish that
somewhere built into the process was a way to have more interaction with the
other participants. There were a few
teachers doing it within my district, but other than conversations with them, I
had no idea what anyone else was doing. I
didn’t have an answer for how that would look exactly, but it was my
thought/suggestion nonetheless. I know
that I could have taken the time to find blogs of other participants, and read
through them all, but to be honest, even with the best of intentions, I just
never found the time to do so. Fast
forward to this year, my second year participating, and this bonus lesson! What a great way to encourage us to find the
time!
I had to slightly alter the directions of this lesson since
not all of the 3 people after me in the list had any posts other than the first
blogging post, and that wasn’t something I wanted to comment on – I wanted to
see more of the creative things people were learning and doing! I wanted to read blogs that had more to read! I also wanted to find 3 that I had something constructive
to offer, rather than just post to post, so I hope this is OK!
So even though I read through about five to six of the blogs after me,
the 3 that I chose to comment on were Barbara Mierlak, Cathie Morton, and Lindsey
Murphy. I read through all of their
posts, but the ones I commented on are linked below.
I really enjoyed this and was very glad to have this
opportunity to see what others are learning about! I got some more ideas to investigate for
myself! One of the things I learned
about was quad blogging – where you get your classroom matched up with others
who are blogging so that the students get people coming to their blogs, reading
and posting! If you don’t have that, blogging
tends to get very boring very quickly with students, so I think this is just
fantastic and can’t wait to share with some colleagues! We are always struggling with getting traffic
onto our students’ blogs, and it often ends up being adults, so it would be
great for kids to have other kids interacting with them!
Great lesson! Thank you!
Cool! So glad you went ahead and made this lesson into what worked for you. That's terrific. And quad-blogging -of course, that must have been hiding somewhere in the back of my head to inspire this lesson. Thanks!
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