Digital Book Clubs: Padlet, blogs and the writing process

Mixing the digital and analog when it comes to reading and writing is always a tricky process. How much is too much? Where should the paper end and the digital begin? How do we differentiate?

Last year we played around with these ideas, a lot. As a district we purchased a license for Seesaw to begin making digital connections in the lower grades. For the upper grades we licensed Campus Press.

But at the end of the day not everything can be paid for, we still ned to leverage free tools. And we also need to make direct connections to traditional media. The actual pen is still pretty mighty.

So, here's one thing we did...

Blogging with 3rd graders: an overview for parents...

This is a repost from my school blog, HeathcoteTech. I worked with the 3rd grade team on blogging with students over the course of the year. This was one of our final activities, presenting the work to parents at an open Parent Coffee...

Why Blogger with my students?

I use Blogger with my students. I have two classes currently running fully independent blogs. One 3rd grade class and one 5th grade class.

I often get asked why I chose Blogger over some of the other blogging platforms, namely Kidblog, EduBlogs, or even WordPress.

My choice was based on the following thoughts:

5th Grade Bloggers

In the ongoing experiment about the best ways to use various tools within the elementary environment I have been letting one class create, design, and curate their own independent blogs via Blogger under our school's Google Apps for Education domain. Ideally we will expand beyond this one class, but at this time a single class is the ideal setting to test the limitations & possibilities of independent student blogging.