Journal Writing

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 2, 2008 at 7:26am

If you want students to journal and others to respond you would need a blog. You can see our student blog here My blog is posted on the frontpage and each student has their own blog. Start with recent posts to see what students are writing about. Let me know if you need more info. Search for student blogs on this site and you will get lots of info on what different people are using for students.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle TeGrootenhuis on August 2, 2008 at 8:17am

Nancy,
the link to your blog doesn't seem to work. With a little "tinkering" I could figure it out, but you might want to try posting a new link. :-)

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Permalink Reply by Lindy Brewster on August 3, 2008 at 9:38pm

Can I throw another option in here? I'm debating blog vs. wiki vs. forum for journal writing this year. I'm thinking more of a forum for the journal writing, but also set up a wiki or a blog to showcase student projects throughout the year.

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Permalink Reply by Gerry on August 4, 2008 at 4:24am

How would you set up a forum? It does sound imteresting.

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Permalink Reply by Lindy Brewster on August 4, 2008 at 11:34am

haha! Good question! That's what I will be discussing with our tech guys this week!

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 4, 2008 at 12:12pm

Another consideration is the audience. Who read the journals that the students used for free writing? Do you want student "free writing" to have a global audience?

Moodle, Elgg, and WordPress give the author and the teacher some control over this. Although I don't know the ins and outs of every wiki engine, I don't think they are well suited for access control over individual posts. Wikis are designed for collaborative writing; whereas, blogs are designed for journaling from the get go.

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Permalink Reply by Mr. Balcom on August 4, 2008 at 12:17pm

Gerry,
Every year my class has written daily journal entries in composition books. They were handed in each day and I wrote comments on each students entry. Very time consuming on my end, let alone carting 20 notebooks from home to school. This year I'm going to have my students blog each day instead. Each student will have a private blog. They will be allowed to read each other's entries and make comments. Have not field tested this but going to try it out this year.

-Mr. Balcom

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 4, 2008 at 5:26pm

I'm sure the kids will love it. Word of caution, any time kids blog, respond to online discussions, etc there is a lot of commenting required by the teacher. I made that mistake when 40 of my gifted 4-6th graders responded to questions in an online book discussion (we used Moodle). I spent hours a week reading and responding!! You might go to a rotating schedule where they only post a couple of times a week or you may be inundated!

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Permalink Reply by Mr. Balcom on August 4, 2008 at 5:45pm

Nancy,
Thanks for the tip!

-Mr. Balcom

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Permalink Reply by Gerry on August 4, 2008 at 5:51pm

Thanks for the advice. I want the journals to be private with only teacher comments but not open to the rest of the class to start out.
Blogs sound like the best way to accomplish this.

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Permalink Reply by John Faig on November 27, 2009 at 9:30am

Mr. Balcom,

Could you add a post letting us know how your blog are working?

Thanks
JDF

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Permalink Reply by Renee MacDermid on November 27, 2009 at 10:15am

I work for a charity called Rafi.ki which runs an online learning community. It's completely free to sign up. Your students can use the site to create homepages, and work on projects and then post their work online. There is also the chance to connect and communicate with other schools.
http://www.rafi.ki/site/about.php

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