Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Blogging at Muritai

At Muritai this year we have made a commitment to use blogging/wiki platforms to share work and learning experiences that are happening in the classrooms with the wider school community. At the beginning of the school year we dedicated a session during a teacher only day and get everyone set up with a class blog or wiki. These have now all been linked to the main school website for easy access. www.muritai.school.nz

We hope our classroom blogs will serve three main purposes.

1. Sharing Work

Teachers are starting to share work completed by their students using blogs and wikis. Examples of quality writing is being uploaded along with pictures of artwork. We are embedding slideshows of photos of children and their work using bubbleshare, rockyou, slide and photobucket. Some of us are also embedding video from youtube and google video. We are also having find finding and sharing loads of cool widgets to add bling to their blogs! Teachers have enjoyed receiving feedback from students and their parents when they leave comments.

2. Learning logs/ Reflective Journals

Teachers are also discovering the benefits of using blogs and wikis as a tool for reflection for students learning. Some classes in the senior school have individual pages where children are able to edit their own pages. They are able to upload examples of their work themselves and give reflections on their achievements and the learning process.

3. Learning Portals

We hope throughout the year our blogs and wikis will be used as learning hubs for children to go to with links to websites and digital learning objects that will assist with their homework. We envisage setting up one off blogs or wikis for term inquiry topics (for e.g The Olympics) with examples of work and hyperlinks to subject specific website.

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