Mr. Prestney's English Blog

Mr. Prestney's English Blog has a lot of information on it, however, there are no student comments - hum. I wonder why? He posts assignments, extra readings, thought provoking posts, information students need - how to write a paragraph, how to annotate a poem - but no student comments. To me, why have the blog just to relay information, that can be done through a website. A blog should be interactive. I was not very impressed with this blog.

He did have one interesting assignment, which was to create a motivational speech based on the style of the St. Crispin's address in Henry V. He had several motivational speeches the students could watch - from YouTube - and he had my favorite motivational speech - the presidents speech right before battle in the movie "Independence Day". Awesome speech - if it had been a "real" speech, it would have been one of the most memorable speeches ever.

The Scoop on History - APUSH and more

I choose this blog because it is near and dear to my daughter's heart - this is her AP American History teacher's (Leslie Scoopmire) class blog. Ms. Scoopmire has been working on this blog for a couple of years, it was not developed over night. The blog has information the AP American History students need on a daily basis. She has outlines for each chapter, as well as, additional readings. She posts all assignments here and reminds students of due dates and tests. She also has some fun items, like a history quote of he day, a tab entitled, What Am I Listening to Now, where her students can see what her taste in music is and post their opinion about what she is listening to. She has a tab for the words of the day and a reminder of the date and time of the AP Exam. The picture at the left is a picture taken by Dorothea Lange entitled, A Migrant Mother. Lange took it in Feb. or March 1936. The students have been talking about the Great Depression, and Scoop (that's what the kids call her) has an article about the little girl on her mother's left in the picture today. It talks about how they felt at the time and how the picture made them feel.

This is an awesome blog example for how to use in a high school setting. It is pleasing to look through and the kids feel comfortable enough to make posts that are honest and express their feelings. For example, one outline, for a chapter later in the year, is very long, and the students from last year felt comfortable enough to post comments like, you have to be kidding and ugh. The comments tell me that she has made her students feel very comfortable and safe and I know this is true since my daughter is in her class this year.

Mrs. Wheeler's Blog

Mrs. Wheeler's Blog was created on edublogs.org. Mrs. Wheeler teaches fifth grade and is trying to go as paperless as possible in her classroom. She uses the posts her students make as assingments, some of which are graded, some just give her feed back. When you first look at the blog and the posts, you think that none of her students are completing the assignments. When you look further down the page, you realize that she doesn't make all the students posts visible. I think this is a good idea, but wonder if it takes away from the experience of responding to others posts. I will have to think about that?