For my blogging mentor-ship project I chose to comment on Maria Knee’s kinder kids classroom blog. I was interested in working with this class because I am interested in eventually teaching kindergarten. I tried my best to comment once or twice a week. When I commented I wrote on as many student blogs as I could. I tried to comment more on the students blogs who had received fewer comments. I think it is important that students know that people are reading their work and care about what they are writing and what they are doing. In my comments I tried to ask questions, to simulate conversation with the students. For example on Maddie’s blog I asked her “What did you do for your holidays?” and she responded “my dads famle cam ori 1 nit”. I then responded “Hi Maddie, thank you for answering my question! You are doing a good job on your sentences. Here is how you can fix you sentence. My dads family came over one night. I hope this helps, keep up the good work with your writing!”. I think it is very important to encourage young students with their writing so that they are excited and constantly encouraged to keep improving their writing. Another example of a comment I left on Briana’s blog was “Hi Brianna, I like your poem about the Macaroni Penguin. Do you know what other kinds of animals live in Antarctica?”. I wanted to see if she would reply and tell me more about what she learned about the macaroni penguin. Or I wanted her to think about what she learned about the Macaroni penguin, and perhaps ask the teacher more questions about penguins. I also made comments on the teachers blog directed to her whole class. I think one of my most successful comments on the teachers blog was when I did an audio reply on her voice thread entitled “Who Do You Love”.
Another example of a comment I made on the teachers Ooblek blog is “Wow that looks Ooblek looks like lot’s of fun to play with! What happened when you picked it up? Did the Ooblek melt in you hands? Then did it get all hard when you stopped playing with it?” I thought these were some good questions to ask. I know that Ooblek is cornstarch and water and I wanted to see if they knew the difference between a liquid and a solid.
One day I got an email from Maria and she asked me about growing up in the north and what kind of animals live up there, etc. I responded in an email. I wish I would have made a wiki about growing up in the North then somehow shared this with her classroom. I tried to talk to Maria’s class on the Yak Pack feature she has on her site, but I must have hit the wrong time. I was just curious to see if it would work. If I could do this mentor-ship again I think I would have liked to have a Skype conversation with Maria’s class like Brittany did. I think it would be really neat for the kids to see me and for me to see them. Then they would have a better idea of who I am and what I sound like. Any way these are all things I would like to experiment with in the future. I learned about a lot of different programs just scrolling around Maria’s website like bubble share, one true media, voice thread, etc. I think it is really neat how Maria combines technology with her Kindergarten class. Before I started mentoring I wrote a blog about how I didn’t think technology like blogging could work in a Kindergarten class. Maria Knee’s blog has proved me wrong. There are so many interesting possibilities for online learning with younger students. Her kinder kids even have online buddies, and I think that is really neat! Over all this has been a very good learning experience for me and I will make sure to keep checking out the updates on Maria’s blog! I would also like to say thank you very much to Maria Knee for allowing me to participate in your online classes! It was a fabulous learning experience!
