Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Blogging for Students

I would like my students to create blogs.
However, I read on here that you need to be at least 13 years old. Perhaps I could use another blogging tool or ask for parental permission.
We could use a blog as part of our proposal.
We could post our ideas and images and even video of the process. This would mean that the judges could watch our progress as we develop the idea.

We will track the progress of our ideas here.
So far, I put the idea out there and had the students look carefully at the proposal.
Stage one of the research process is to understand the assignment. So often kids think they know what they are doing and rush off to do....what?
"What are you doing?"
"The Best Buy thing."
"What do you need to do for that?"
"I don't know. Come up with ideas?"
"Yes. What kind of ideas? What is the purpose of this assignment? What exactly are you supposed to do?"

It is necessary to get a good understanding of the purpose of the assignment. We need not only to know the exact requirements but the purpose or meaning driving the assignment. We want to have an authentic learning situation. If the students can develop an understanding of the 'why' it makes the learning so much more significant.
If they can come up with a response to the question "So what?", they are doing well.

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