Blogging with Students

Having set up this blog I am now keen to try and see if blogging can motivate my Year 9 Home Group to learn. I have set up a blog and all the kids are authors. My first idea is to post an interesting question each week and have the kids post their answers. They will then read each others posts and by doing so shared their learning. Students will then have to comment on someone elses post, providing feedback. This process will be a part of their pastoral care time as well as some time commintment outside of school. Students will contribute to the design of the site as well as the types of Widgets (applications) that we put on the site. There will be some discussion around site content ie 'this is not Facebook' it is a site to discuss learning, appropriate language for a blog, acknowledging sources, what is constructive feedback etc... An idea to generate the questions each week/fortnight will be to approach other teachers of the Year 9's and see what topics they are currently teaching and then generate questions that focus student learning in those areas.