How cool is this??

As a ICT specialist I don’t have my own class, instead I see the entire school over the course of the week for between 45 mins and 90 mins. Doesn’t leave me a lot of time to really get my teeth into something with 30 odd kids in each of the blocks. Today, however, I set out to start blogging with some kids.
I borrowed 8 kids from a couple of year 2 classes and the fun began. We talked about diaries and learning about people – kinda approriate because they are looking at the Netherlands and one of the most famous diaries of all time came from there. I showed them a blog written by a girl their own age. I showed them how to read the comments and how to move between posts and pages easily. Then I let them read. Just like I wouldn’t ask them to write an acrostic poem without first reading a few and getting the idea, I don’t want to get them writing blogs without at least reading a selection.
Five minutes in and one of the girls says. “Miss Wills, this girl walked across the River Gorge Bridge and that was in the book we read last week!” Completely unscripted and completely surprised me. Here in a totally different literacy environment the kids were able to write a comment on the girl’s blog explaining the cool coincidence. The girls were eager to continue, even asking if they could come back at lunchtime to read more. So now I am in the process of setting up a blogmeister blog for the class so that they can share their experiences with the world.
This was truly an empowering experience and really showed me how small the world can be thanks to this great technology.
I’m sure many people out there have had really cool “light bulb” moments…care to share!!!

New Goal: Find more blogs that the kids will be interested in reading and get them commenting on them – on the things they find interesting!!