Introduction

I am constantly amazed by the power of the Twitter professional learning network and am always challenged and inspired by my colleagues- needless to say that this does not stop over the holiday period. Today I was tagged in an Internet meme about quality blogging and commenting by Stef Galvin.

An Internet meme is described by Wikipedia as a

“term to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet, Internet meme is an idea that is propagated through the World Wide Web. The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag, or just a word or phrase”.

This meme about quality blogging and commenting originated from Silvia Tolisano where she challenged educators to think about the ways they use blogging and how they audit comments.

I have only been a blog writer since September and have only just scratched the surface of blogging with students- so in the blogging world I am somewhat of a novice but am willing to reflect upon and share my ideas in response to this meme.

Creating Authentic and Quality Blog Posts and Comments

When I began blogging with my students I was somewhat naive about the amount of preteaching and modelling that was needed- as a result, what students were writing in the beginning were not authentic or quality forms of commenting. When reflecting on this I decided to integrate blogging within writing sessions, explicitly teaching it as a text type, coming up with a student agreed upon check list and using this to form the basis for student commenting. I suppose I should mention that the ages of students I was working with was between 5 and 8, grades Prep to 2! This in itself was a challenge as I was working with students of varied degrees of ability and interest.

As a class we read a variety of blog posts and comments and discussed what we noticed about them. We came up with some ideas on what makes a quality post or comment and recorded our ideas-

We then created a checklist which allowed students to cross check their comments to ensure they were writing, quality, authentic and relevant comments.

Auditing Comments and Posts

Spread the Word

I have enjoyed reflecting on the use of blogging and assessing student posts and comments and look forward to extending my knowledge further in this area as I endeavor to blog with grade 4, 5 and 6 students next year!

I am tagging three more educators to take part in this meme and invite any other readers to write their own post!

@soingirl – Mrs Watson’s 2/3 Class

@vgridley – Juniors Blackburn

@jodiwoo – Ms Woodward’s Class Blog

For more information on this meme post or tips, ideas and thoughts on educational blogging please visit Silvia Tolisano’s blog- Langwitches or Kathleen Morris’ Quality Commenting and Blogging Meme and Blogging Tips for Students and Teachers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2011 at 8:45 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.