It's amazing what can be accomplished with a class size of three and motivated learners. I had a great time working with three excellent teachers who wanted to find out more about how blogs might be beneficial for their students. They would like to link their classes (they teach in three different schools) by sharing blog topics, peer editing and commenting. What a great idea.
The tool I chose to introduce them to is
Class Blogmeister, a site created and managed by David Warlick. David has given the community a fabulous tool which fits right into the needs of the elementary class ... it offers a secure and safe place for students and their teachers to discover the value of sharing writing and other creative work. I have taken a look at Blogger and some of the other sites out there, including ones specifically designed for children, but Class Blogmeister really suits what I think our classrooms need.
They quickly discovered many other neat things that can be done with the classroom blogs with the simple addition of html in many of the text fields.
I'm looking forward to seeing their results.
Most of the time I enjoy working with teachers and last Friday was no exception. The occasion was our school district professional development day. The topics for the two sessions I led were, Blogging with Classblogmeister and Creating with ComicLife. Both sessions were 90 minutes long and we only hit the highlights. It was encouraging to hear from many of the group that they planned to incorporate the newly learned skills into their teaching practice. I note this weekend that some have carried on developing their blog pages. 
