A Window into the World: Blogging in the Classroom

On Friday October 21, 2011, I attended a professional development session put on by Manitoba Association of Multiage Educators (MAME) called A Window into the World: Blogging in the Classroom. It was facilitated by Erin Malkoske and Leslie Dent Scarcello. Erin is a Grade 1/2 teacher and Lesilie teaches Grade 5. It was very apparent that Erin and Leslie integrate technology into their teaching and learning environment in ways that are relevant, useful and productive to their students and families. With their hands-on workshop and sharing of information I am seeing the benefits of technology in the classroom with greater clarity than I have done before.

Carol Dweck researches and writes about two kinds of mindsets: fixed and growth. We need to think about the implications of our own mindset on who, where, what and how we teach. We also need to think about how we are communicating our mindset to our students. I want my students to be really clear on the fact that I have a growth mindset. More importantly, I want them to have a growth mindset too. So today I tried some new things, and I learned how to add pages to my blog, some new gadgets and saw some samples of other blogs I might want to borrow some ideas from in the future. My blog is definitely simple and at a beginner's level, but it's a start.

While a colleague and I were talking about the importance of journaling this way for students and ourselves, it made me think about a passage from the book Leading The Way to Making Classroom Assessment Work by Anne Davies that says... "When we involve students in communicating about their learning, we are inviting them and their parents to have thoughtful conversations with us and with each other about learning."
Through practice, play and conversations with students and their families I am learning that technology can unleash a new level of creative thought. As I continue to invest the time and effort into blogging, I trust that this virtual workspace will be a great tool for having conversations about learning and is a terrific way to demonstrate evidence of deep learning in action.

My First Visitors

The other day a group of children in Grade 1 and 2 approached me in the hallway and told me they had visited my blog. I'm pretty confident that my face went red from embarrassment because their classroom blog and computer skills are much better than mine. The children were quick to let me know that I shouldn't be frightened of blogging, and that if I needed help, I could come to their classroom and they would assist me. Also, one of my tender-hearted Grade 1 students shared,Rylee said, "Mrs. Caldwell, blogging is just sharing your ideas with friends, and we're your friends." Needless to say, I will be enlisting the support of the Grade 1/2 classroom on a regular basis.

Grade 3 Provincial Assessment

I attended a professional development session on the Grade 3 Provincial Assessment. The workshop provided our school team of Grade 3 teachers with new information and understandings as to the importance of this assessment practice. Our team concluded that the Grade 3 Provincial Assessment is a guide for instructional planning, identifies strengths/needs, classroom based assessment, a communication tool, evidence is triangulated, purposeful and gives time to plan/teach, assessment of beginning of Gr. 3 outcomes, snapshot at the end of October, and is not a standards test, a time to teach to the test, something to use at the start of the year and then forget about it.

Beginning

I am not sure what I am totally doing creating a blog, but my technology savvy daughter and good friend are encouraging me to be less of blog lurker and start contributing my own learning and experiences to the blogging community. In school I foster the importance of making our learning public so that we may all learn from each other, now it is my turn.

I am not sure yet what I'll be posting on my blog, it could be my reflections, something that's happened at school or something that I've learned from someone else.

This is very nerve racking, but at the same time I'm excited about this new adventure because it is a good opportunity to walk in the shoes of the learners at my school everyday. So here goes nothing!