Weblog of Wesley Fryer

Dear Yoda,
I have listened to all your past podcasts this summer and now feel up to the challenge of using Web 2.0 tools in my classroom. I’m going to try starting my own personal blog for my own profession growth. I want to use a class blog for my students. I also have an idea to start a Professional Development reflection blog for our district. I’m going to ask our Asst. Superintendent in charge of professional development about it. I also want to use a class wiki to create class stories. We’re going to try at least podcasting stories if not actual digital storytelling. We have one student computer in our room and a lab in our building that we visit for 60 min. a week, so it’s a little hard to use the tools when access is limited. However, I’m going to give it a shot next year.

We did actually do a blog last year. Around Christmas all the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers read “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” to their classes. We read a chapter a day and asked a trivia question the next day during the morning announcements. Correct answers were put into a drawing for a prize at the end of the day. I wanted to make even it more interactive, so I set up a blog for our school about the book. I had an open-ended question for students to comment on. There were also links to an online quiz for each chapter. No other classes ended up doing it besides mine, but it was a good first attempt. It is at http://primary23.edublogs.org/