This week I met with Cory Antonini a consultant on our school team to discuss connecting my classroom. I wanted to make sure I had a clear understanding of what the polices were for Regina Public School regarding individual students blogs and the use of twitter. I described to Cory the experiences that I had last week when I tried to have my classroom connect and comment on other classroom blogs. Cory and I viewed my current classroom blog and created a classroom Twitter account. When we tried to add a Twitter feed to my current blog we were unable to. After some discussion about wanting to eventually add individual student blogs and have a variety of security options available I decided to use Blogger because it is linked to the Regina Public Schools Google account. Cory also showed my the Kidblog website and suggested that I explore it for when I want to add individual student blogs. I want to find a tool that is easy for young children to use and is easy to manage. Cory encouraged me to continue teaching my children how to comment on other classroom blogs. He also suggested that we start creating content as a classroom through shared writing experiences and posting them on Twitter and our class blog. Learning another blog format is a bit of a challenge but experience is the best teacher! If you are using Blogger or Kidblog I would love to hear about your experiences.
I am currently in the process of creating content for the new classroom blog. I was excited to be able to add a translate function to the blog. I teach a large number of children who are new to Canada and English is an additional language in their homes. I hope that this tool allows families to receive information from the school in the language that they are the most comfortable.
Another step forward that our school took this week was to have a technician come to our school to set up our iPads. We now have a way to add apps to our iPads and have ordered cases to keep them safe. I welcome any app suggestions that you might have.
Beyond the Glass 