Monday, January 01, 2007

The Kids Are Alright

As 2007 starts, there is a lot of talk about the future of web 2.0 in education: listing the best posts of the year, wringing hands over continued obstacles, nodding of heads in agreement , and many, many predictions of what will happen this year...

My 8 and 9 year old third graders are ready now, they are alright with web 2.0. Many of them take it for granted. A third of my classroom has blogged from home over Christmas Vacation:

Casey: The Lucky Soup 1/1/07
Nathan: Things I got for Christmas - 12/31/06
AnaLisa: Winter Vacation - 12/30/06
Logan: My Christmas - 12/27/06
Nicole: The Accident - 12/26/06
Riley1: Hockey is a sport - 12/24/06
Kyra: Over The Week - 12/19/06
Logan: The Play Date - 12/19/06

These kids are comfortable in the medium. My job is simply to give it to them. My resolution for 2007 is to give them more. They will not waste the opportunity.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is really something... and the writing is good! It must be a really good feeling for the teacher.

Mark Ahlness said...

Janice, it is indeed a good feeling when your kids do so well. Not like I should take a whole ton of the credit, but my kids are motivated! I should note there was even more writing submitted, but it needed more work - I offered the writers online feedback (behind the scenes), so there will be more coming. Thanks for sending comments to my kids' blogs! (I have to get your blog unblocked again from school - sigh)