Monday, September 04, 2006

A very different start

Tomorrow I go in to school for the final day of set up. The next day the kids come. In Seattle, we start school with the last wave in the US.

Most of my kids will be eight years old. Blogging? Yikes, there is so much to get together before we even talk about blogging. But it is exciting to think about the possibilities....

Today Doug Noon posted Your Blog Ate My Comment which got me thinking about my own comments and how to keep track of them. He also talked about his del.icio.us network account, how useful it is and so on. His post is definitely worth a read.

Hours later I was using my network del.icio.us account, and I was planning to use Doug's strategy for keeping track of his own comments.... and thinking about how to help my eight year olds keep track of the comments they will be making on other blogs this year. Good golly, this is a heck of a lot more than making sure the pencils are sharpened and the bulletin boards look fresh.

The reason this is so important for me to get a handle on is that last year several of my kids spent as much time reading and commenting on the blogs of others as they did writing on their own blogs. Would they like to be able to track their comments? Would I like to track their comments? My goodness, yes!!!! Last year we spent a lot of time talking about commenting strategies. For all the obvious reasons, this would be an incredible tool to add to the belt of the classroom teacher, and a fantastic reflective/self-evaluative piece for my kids.

Two days before they come through the classroom door, a month before they log on to their blog for the first time, my planning starts. And everything is very different.

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