Finding the Right Tool for Student Work - Feedback

I came across this blog being used by a teacher and I'm wondering what feedback others would give this teacher. This made me wonder further about where the best resources are to guide teachers on the "right tool." And, finally I was wondering about if there was a place that is set up where teachers could share the type of work they're doing and get rated and commented on (if they choose to be so daring).
Yahoo! for Teachers may be that place.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on May 6, 2008 at 12:29pm

I don't think the blog you reference is a "blog".

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Nielsen on May 6, 2008 at 12:56pm

Hi Nancy,

I guess that's my point. This "blog" was emailed to me by a colleague who wanted to share a blog from a social studies teacher with, "Some really interesting student blogs that I thought you might like to see..."

So my thought is that the teachers, students, administrators, visitors are seeing this and are defining this as a blog and others may be defining what they do as a blog because they used a tool that is called a blog, but it's not really the right tool.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on May 6, 2008 at 6:24pm

Time to re-educate. One thing blogs have done is allow all those teachers who never figured out how to do websites to own a tiny piece of virtual real estate. Too bad they are missing the real beauty of blogging with kids--- here's our student blog, send it to your colleague for comparision. Hehe. N.

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Permalink Reply by Alice Mercer on May 7, 2008 at 6:30pm

Did the person ask for our input? If they didn't, I really wouldn't say a thing. He's got kids writing, and maybe he is using the blogging platform for a web page, but so what? If people want to get rated, and commented on they can come here and post up their blog links and ask for feedback. Why would you go to Yahoo for Teachers?

Second, I don't think that it is a pure web page. It's more of a transitional blog. Look at this post: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1210254077586032196&po..., where the students are commenting on reading they have been assigned. They are responding to the teacher, but that's the case with most blogs I read written by/for adults. The blog owner puts up a post, and most of the commenters engage with the original post, and not as much with each other. Not every post on my blog gets a comment. I'd be loathe to knock a teacher for not getting his students interacting that way.

Why would the pages he has set up for students (which don't appear to be on a blog platform, they only have a guestbook) be the "wrong" platform. What platform would be more appropriate? You don't like this because not because he is using the "wrong" tool, but because he is using it in a way you don't approve of.

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Permalink Reply by Britt Gow on May 8, 2008 at 1:36am

I agree Alice - this user has made a start which is worth recognising. The web-page format (call it a blog if you like ;) ) is useful for students to quickly access hyperlinks.
We all started somewhere - and sometimes we blossom! Each to their own, in their own time and place.