Student Blogging - Experiment in Public

After I started blogging for real last year, I came to realize what a valuable tool this kind of reflection is.  Each week, I choose some piece of teaching life and really think about what it means to me.  I did this before, but it was hit or miss random thoughts and usually while I was driving.  Now, I try to figure out what I really want to explore through writing.

The fact that other people read my reflections pleases me almost as much as it confuses me.  For example, one day two weeks ago, my number of page views in Portugal jumped from 4 to 54 in one hour.  What happened?  (If you are one of the 50 Portuguese readers, please comment below.)  I love checking the stats, not just for the number but for which posts people are reading and where people are reading.  I like thinking about the fact that my experience as a teacher might lend any kind of insight to other teachers (or even students and parents).

Last year, I decided I wanted my students to have this experience as well.  I want them to reflect on the things they are learning in all of their classes.  I also think it fits well into some of the changes that are happening in education.  If you remember my post called The Poster By My Desk, you know that one of the ways we are rethinking teaching is Talk to Strangers and another is Real Work for Real Audiences.  Student blogging seems like the perfect way to do this.  I believe they will write better if they know it is being read by people out in the cyber universe.  I believe they will reflect well if they are trying to convey it to someone else.

Once per week, my 8th graders will be assigned a blog by one of their teachers.  It won't always be me, but they will be writing about something they are learning, and this makes me happy.  I may be a science teacher, but I know the value of writing and am so happy they will be doing this.

In order to keep all their blogs collated, I have compiled a list of links to their blogs.  If you would like to read the blogs of 8th grade students and encourage them with comments, you may find a list of all their blogs at this blog.  This has all gotten a little too meta for me because I am using this blog to link you to another blog, which is a list of 61 more blogs.  I've never used the word blog this many times in one day - even when I ran a work shop on blogs.