Thursday, September 24, 2009

What Inspires Students?

I witnessed a totally unexpected, but welcome, spark in my classroom this morning. Last night I resumed working on my blog even after attending our 21clc meeting and working afterwards in my room until late. Yes, this is addictive, even though many newbies may not think so at this time. I had the same feelings. Until now. As it was getting late, I asked myself, “Why are you doing this? This is cosmetic. Not really important.” My answer, “It is cool, and I like it.” It was a simple task, really. I was linking a list of new book arrivals on my classroom blog to the author’s website. What I did not realize, was this would be the link to motivating my lethargic seniors to participate in reading, writing, and creating. As I demonstrated a student’s blog post of a recent book she read and linked to her author, I casually clicked over on the class list of new arrivals and arrived at Laurie H. Anderson’s website, www.thewriterlady.com “That IS cool. I want a dot com! I do too. Why can’t we create our own dot com? She has got it goin on! Yeah, my girlfriend is reading Wintergirls.” I saw sparks from this group I did not know could exist. What could I say? Look guys, I am willing to do this, however, we will be learning together. Are the little things we do as we learn and create with Web 2.0 important? Obviously, the time I spent last night paid off. Anderson’s link within Web 2.0 inspired students in my small literacy classroom in Batesville, Arkansas. This endeavor is way outside the box, and I need assistance. Any recommendations anyone out there might have, are extremely welcome.

2 comments:

  1. Cool! I have several author blog in my Google Reader...I'll have to share them with you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Are you wanting to have your students create their own "dot.com" sites? If so, I can help. I think, especially for seniors, this would be an awesome and worthwhile project--to send students off with their own site. But, it's not free. I'd love to talk face2face with you about this idea.

    ReplyDelete