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Interesting. Can you elaborate on your concerns in regards to usability with the younger students and how your thinking has changed?

I originally thought that blogging had potential for the elementary level, but I believed it to be too open of a forum. I didn’t want the children’s comments to be open to anyone out in cyberspace. Many parents are very concerned about having their child’s names, let alone their likeness anywhere on the net. I agree with their concern. I realized that I could set up a private Wiki site for the kids could post their ideas. After visiting the education-world site, I now know that blogging could also be private, i.e. password protected. Now I can imagine more possibilities using blogs in my grade 3/4 class. I’m looking forward to trying some journaling where the class can respond to their peers. I teach computer to two grade 3/4 classes and we can begin by responding to one another. From there, I would like to correspond/share with another school.

One article that extends from the original site that I found, entitled “Log On to a Blog” (http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/voice/voice123.shtml) is written by a Canadian teacher. She discusses the usefulness of blogging and has developed a rubric to help her mark the children’s assignments. The students’ entries are well written. In fact the studies show the overall improvement of literacy. I was very impressed by some of her children’s responses. Perhaps a bit of a downfall to blogging is the time the teacher must have to put in to respond to everyone’s blogs.

http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/default.aspx
Another site. Interesting as it gives many examples of blogs in the elementary school. It also links to other school blogs. After looking at some of the entries in the first site, I was surprised how short some of the blogs are by grade 3’s. The teacher has taken the time to respond to each student.