Demands of blogging

We had a great Professional Development session today. We talked about the current trends in e-learning and what is happening in schools today. I really enjoyed some of the thought provoking discussion that took place because it let me evaluate what I am doing in my classroom. My current challenge is this whole blogging thing.
At the moment I find it difficult to find enough time in a day (as well as energy) to do all the things that I want to do. Blogging for my self is something I need to get into the habit of doing. For me that will come with time. What I have been thinking more and more about lately is blogging for kids.

I use kidblog with my class (http://kidblog.org/Room265/). Please come and visit us by the way, the kids love to see your comments.

I have some children in my class who have a number of dyslexic type needs (I don't want to label them as dyslexic because it is such a huge range of difficulties that fit under this very large umbrella we call dyslexia). These students often dislike writing and reading. Blogging is a great tool for them as they don't have the negative connotations with computers as they do with pen and paper, which is usually a struggle. I realise that not all children will jump up and down about blogging, but I have realised that some of my children have started to write about their day quite regularly. The comments they write to each other are becoming increasingly more constructive, rather than just "cool" or "nice story." Some still have some growing to do in that sense but we are getting there. This has also been great for my really bright kids because they feel like they are educating the people around them by writing interesting facts. Some of my boy's write a fact each week. They have to find a new piece of information, learn about it and blog about it their own words (NO COPYING!) So over all this has been a very valuable tool to increase children's confidence and enjoyment for expressing their ideas in the written form.
This brings me to my dilemma. I use kidblog to keep an eye on what the children are writing and help out some of the children who struggle with spelling by checking some of what they write. I don't correct all mistakes, I think it is important for them to make these and discuss what they have written with their peers. What I'm finding now though is that I can't always keep up. During the term with all the other things we have to do (MARKING, updating wikis, collaborating with children on their google doc creating flipcharts...) I am finding it harder and harder to make sure that I check each blog and approve comments.
So here is my question to my fellow educators... How do you keep up with the increasing demand to keep blogs, wikis, sites, etc up to date? What do you do to manage these? Am I being a little too ambitious by checking all these blogs?
What are your thoughts on the matter?

Science

Science is amazing. It makes us questions everything. Why is the sky blue? How does our heart work? How does a light bulb produce light?
I've been thinking about my kids wonderings lately ... so I thought I'd answer a couple of their questions and in the process add some more.
My class went to the Science Road Show yesterday and we had a blast. Having that exposure to science experiments and not only looking at them but being able to touch and explore, filled my kids with wonder. It was fantastic to see them so excited about learning. They wanted to see everything, touch everything, understand everything.
I think we need to expose our kids to science more often. They don't have enough opportunities to experiment at such a young age.
Today that was my mission.
Who would have thought that water and a few paperclips could achieve just that.
Today I carefully placed one single paperclip into a container of water and asked the kids to do the same.
It took them a long time to figure out how to do it but they managed.
In the process we discussed how this was possible.
Here is what they understood from it all:

All we needed were some paperclips and containers with water. Now there really no excuse to experiment!

Graphic organisers

As I mentioned before, we've been learning about charities.  The charity we have been focussing on is Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust. 

Today we looked at how helicopters work. Instead of telling the kids to display what they learned in their books I got the kids to show their work in a template I created using Draw in Google Docs.

The children collected the information about the forces at play and placed their findings in the template. I thought that four medium sized boxes would be enough space for the children to show their understanding without intimidating those who don't like to write. Graphic organisers are great like that. 

I was pleasantly surprised. The discussions that the children were having were fantastic and even my more reluctant writers displayed their what they learned. Most filled the boxes I gave them and added more because I just didn't give them enough space as I was later told.

This is the template I created:

This is what some of my kids created:

So what do you think? I was blown away!

What the?

Our syndicate is focussing on charities this year. We looked at what a charity does, how they work and why we need them. From this we have began to focus on one charity that will then be our focus for fundraising.
So before we get into the planing stages of this year long project we needed to find out what our chosen charity is all about.  I have started the children up on an inquiry learning project. They have been working in small groups. At this stage (while we are going through the note taking steps) I have given the information to the class. I thought it was simple and easy to follow, however, after asking the children to read the information I realised that it didn't seem so simple to them.

I talked to some of the children around the room about what they were reading and although they understood the main points of the text a few didn't understand specific words.

Now when I was a kid I was expected to go and find the meaning of words in a dictionary myself. Mind you English was my second language and early on in my NZ school life I didn't understand many words at all, so I got loads of practice looking for words in a dictionary. What I found interesting was that some children in my class were completely stumped and didn't know what to do. When we discussed what they could do to figure the meanings of these words out they looked at me like I was from another planet.
"You mean you aren't just going to tell me?"
I thought that they would have figured out by now that I don't make things easy for them.

So my question is... what is happening that our students are increasingly achieving less and less in vocabulary tests and are becoming more confused by dictionaries (and I don't just mean the paper ones, online too).
I worked with a group to find meanings to words and for the first part of the exercise they managed to track the word down and even read the definition but that was it. Nothing seemed to settle and the meaning was not applied to the text. I had their little eyes looking up at me as if to say, "here it is, I found it! Now will you tell me what it means?"
We struggled for a while but we got there in the end. I endeavour to keep giving my students interesting vocabulary to figure out the meanings of. I will keep using difficult words when I speak just to expose them to something different.
But next year I will need to start again...

So what do we do? How do we increase our kids vocabulary and how do we continue to develop these skills that our kids seem to be loosing?