This year, I've been charged with teaching a group of scholars with intensive academic and behavior needs within my urban charter school. The scholars are dealing with a lot inside of the school, and outside of it. The Austin community in Chicago where I teach is high-poverty and riddled with gangs. Currently, I'm teaching an LRE 3 special education classroom, in which I teach all 5 core subjects to 5 different grade levels.
Needless to say, keeping levels of engagement and collaboration high has been a priority. This task has also been really stretching my creativity! How will I keep students accountable for excellent work? How can I make our learning worthwhile? How can I give these scholars an experience that will extend beyond the classroom and help them later in life? How can I help them share their work without hanging it in the hallway, which is embarrassing for them?
Enter: KidBlog.
I decided to use KidBlog like an online portfolio for our students. In this way, students work hard to create and fine tune their excellent work. Ultimately, they know that it will be displayed "publicly" for their parents, classmates, favorite teachers and administrators. They will also be able to view each other's work and provide appropriate, respectful feedback (a skill in itself).
Additionally, I created my own KidBlog page for our classroom. On this page, I blog about the assignment, the process and skills involved, the expected outcomes, and ways for parents to extend their learning at home through conversations and additional learning. When appropriate, I post pictures of student work and the process behind it for parents to get a glimpse into the AWESOME that is our evolving classroom.
To share our work and make it seem extra official, I've created professional business cards. Now, students can share a link to their KidBlog with trusted adults and friends - parents, aunties and uncles, siblings, etc. all through a QR code which they can scan through any smart phone or tablet.
On the back of each business card, I have included a QR code to my own teacher blog. Again, the purpose of my blog is so that parents can quickly scan and learn more about the projects and how to talk to their child about the topics at home. Sometimes parents need a little empowerment, too!
I've committed to connecting the experience of having a business card, running a blog, and posting comments/feedback to real life. We look at professional portfolios and blogs and we reflect about how we can make our work as professional as possible. Since all of our work ends up on the blog, students are more invested into the process, which ultimately increases engagement. This is the perfect storm that also allows me to increase rigor, as well.
There are many blogging sites that are perfect for students, but KidBlog is nice because you don't need an email address to get started and all posts can be moderated by the teacher and parent access codes can be created for safe distribution.
The downside of KidBlog is there is limited space available for free accounts. But! We'll cross that bridge we come to it.
In the mean time, happy blogging!
