By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com
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KEENE — Educators are well informed on the negative points of Internet blogging — harassment, bullying and generally any other negative behavior that would have won a kid a swat on the rear a few decades ago.
At Keene Elementary School, though, blogging is so positive an experience that students are learning other valuable lessons by extension, such as how to write.
The first-year program, introduced by first-year school technology specialist Amy Oelschlager, is such a hit that students can’t wait to tackle their cyber writing assignments in the classrooms.
“Something I saw as a teacher is that a lot of kids didn’t have any motivation to write,” Oelschlager, a former fourth-grade teacher, said. “They saw writing as something they did for the teacher. I did some research and found a lot of things about blogging in elementary classrooms.
“We set up an education blog site. We have different areas for younger kids and older kids. Kids create their own blogs. We took the writing we were doing in the classroom, and we put that on the blogs. It was amazing to see the difference in the quality of the work once the kids knew they were writing for the blogs. We would give them a writing assignment, and they would ask, ‘Are we going to put this on our blog?’ We’d say, ‘Yes, of course.’ They were excited about getting to share what they wrote.”
Before learning the finer points of blogging on the World Wide Web, they learned the finer points of WWW safety.
“We talked about cyber-bullying and making sure what you put online is kind,” Oelschlager said. “Even in fourth grade, a lot of the students have Facebook pages. What you say online matters. It’s important to know what is OK and what’s not OK. If you put a picture on Internet, it’s forever. We started with that. I do a whole lesson about how there are bad things on the Internet and how we want the students to know the good things, and that if you encounter bad things, there are things you should do.
“I see a good impact already. We do some reading of other blogs. We link to other schools. Our students note when they see something that’s not very nice.”
Learning to blog was actually an offshoot of learning to write.
“We started doing a lot of writing assignments,” Oelschlager said. “We did current events. Students would link to news articles in their blogs, and we would talk about that. They loved it. They were writing with an audience in mind. What we lacked in the classroom was an authentic audience. I was the only one reading it and grading it.”
Not so with the blogs.
“I’m from Minnesota, and my mom would go online and comment on the blogs,” Oelschlager said. “Or we would team up with another fourth-grade class, and they could comment. Kids were saying, ‘Oh, you mean other people are going to be reading this? I’ll write it a little differently then.’”
Blogging is for all ages.
“Third through fifth grade are all blogging,” Oeschlager said. “The classroom teachers have blogs. They all look a little different. The fourth-grade blog is geared toward writing. In fifth grade, we’ve done things with science. It’s all authentic, just like the real world. The reason people blog is that it’s something they’re interested in. It’s been fun to see this evolve with our kids.”
Whenever educators discuss technology, blogging is a topic these days, Oelschlager said.
“I’m working on my master’s in educational technology, and I had a whole class about blogging, podcasting and wiki. It’s a huge thing in education.”
It makes sense that Keene Elementary, heavy into blogs, would also employ podcasts.
“It’s like our own radio show,” Oelschlager said. “Podcasts and blogging go hand in hand. Our podcasts are housed on a blog page.”
Many students are on the cutting edge of educational technology as soon as they begin their formal educations.
“As they get to their commended score, which is 90 or above, they get to join the commended kids club,” Oelschlager said. “That’s a lot of our GT [gifted and talented] kids. They do their own radio show. They’ve made up a name, Blue Lightning Radio. We have Blue Lightning Radio 3, 4 and 5, corresponding to the grade levels. They decide on their topics. In January, when the crisis occurred in Haiti, we did a podcast about Haiti. In the past, they’d all been really funny. As we were planning the one on Haiti, the kids said, ‘This isn’t a funny topic. Maybe we should do a poem instead.’
“A couple of the kids are really into science. They talked about what an earthquake is. They would tell a story about a person they read about. We did a podcast on Earth Day and one about the Winter Olympics. Since it’s our high-achieving kids, I ask them, ‘What do you want to do it on this time?’ We make a list and divide it up, and they do it. I help guide them, but they’re in charge.”
Not surprising that some teachers are overwhelmed by the technological brilliance of young students.
Oelschlager tells teachers to go with the flow.
“I hear teachers say they don’t know how to do something,” she said, “and I reply, ‘Just ask one of your students because they probably already know.’ One of the teachers told me she was trying to do something with pictures. She couldn’t figure it out, and one of the kids said, ‘Oh, I know how’ and came over and did it. The kids can do a lot more than we give them credit for sometimes.”
