Blogging... From Caterpillars to Butterflies

I think I know what I'm going to do for my blogging lesson. In a couple of weeks we are going to get monarch and painted lady caterpillars in our classroom. Therefore, I'm going to set up a blog for my students (for in class with me and for at home with their parents) to comment on the progress of the caterpillars to butterflies. As a class, we will post pictures daily and explain what our caterpillars are going through. I might post on the blog from the viewpoint of a caterpillar. I think the students and parents will both be excited about the blog!

Finishing Famous American Unit

I'm finally coming to an end on my Famous American Unit. We are in the final steps. For the finale of the project my students are putting together a museum of Famous Americans for their parents to come see. The museum will contain 6 Famous Americans. For each Famous American studied, there is a display board and two artifacts. It's amazing to see how much the students learned from this project but more importantly how excited they were to learn about the next Famous American! This project took a lot of prepping but now that I did it this year, next year will be a breeze! I actually can't wait until the parents come to the museum! It excites me as much as it excites the kids :)

Thoughts on Web 2.0

Web 1.0 was good for me when first learning web design (how to create a webpage). I liked being able to post information on the internet without anyone telling me that I was doing it wrong. It allowed me as the user to feel more confident.

However Web 2.0 is much more exciting as a user. I feel students will be more excited to use it as well because it allows for collaboration. It allows for more than one person to participate and reflect/comment through activities such as blogs and wikis.

Web 2.0 activities allow students to continue to edit, learn, and comment even after a project is over. It allows them to blog about current topics they are learning about as well as go back and comment on other people's blogs. Web 2.0 allows users to be continual learners to information they've read or posted/commented about.