Summary of some blogs I have read.

The first blog I read was, Why I Don't Give Homework. The author of this blog could not justify giving homework to his high school students because through the use of technology he had become a supper efficient user of time during his class. He has a battery of software that keeps him well organized so that he squeezes all the learning he can out of his students during a 2 hour class-therefore no homework needed. He also mentioned that the students who didn't need the extra practice would be the students completing the assignments and of course those who would benefit from the extra practice were the ones that don't often do their homework. The author's writing style was pretty straight forward and clear.


My second blog visit was to a blog that was written like a magazine article about how students can spy on their teachers and classmates with an assortment of electronic devices that could be the cause of great anguish and was embarrassment when digital images show up on Youtube. The blog post entitled, Spies Like Us, is pretty scary. Maybe we as teachers should be proactive and record our own classes and post them on Youtube ourselves in the manner in which we wish to be seen.


The blog, Scribe Post, presented a simple yet powerful idea about students taking turns summarizing the learning that took place in class each day. This opportunity set up some healthy competition among students. Each day's scribe usually wants to do better than the scribe the day before. These summaries also serve as a reference for anyone in class that may need a memory boost or clarification of the day’s subject.


I enjoyed reading about the concept presented in the blog titled, Upside Down Pop Quiz. This author created electronic quizzes that forced students to read the text to find the answers. These quizzes were set up ahead of the day the topics would be discussed in class. Taking the quizzes help students by giving them some background in the subject. This teacher allowed students to take the quizzes as many times as needed. Correct answers were never given to the students but location of the answer in the text was offered on missed questions. Classroom discussions were much improved in this teacher's class as well as grades. The quizzes only counted for 10% of the final grade but could be just enough to move a student up one grade. This sounded like something that would work nicely with our Moodle application. Teachers, of course, will need to know how to ask higher level thinking questions.


The last blog I read was a compilation of posts that were written by 2nd graders commenting on the whereabouts of a duck that hung out around school. It was nice that 2nd graders were blogging but I didn't find it very interesting. Maybe if I was a parent of one of those 2nd graders I would have been 'ooohing 'and 'aaaahing' over the comments. I wished I had read a different blog.