I really am in love with my PLN. Yes; my professional learning network on twitter is just the best. It’s amazing what you learn, share, analyze, create, connect, invent, collaborate, explore and even observe in the twitterverse.
Last week some of my PLN were discussing a blogging scope and sequence. Doug Pete was commenting on the importance of assessing student blogs and developing a criteria if blogging is part of the class. Kim Cofino also shows some wonderful teacher/student examples of rubrics, ideas and even a collaborative document for anyone to edit! Further to this, make sure to check out Will Richardson’s book – Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom. I know our school division’s resource centre has a copy that I bought last year. It’s a great resource for teachers who are intimidated by integrating technology or those who would like more practice classroom examples so they feel more comfortable in integrating this into their classroom on a more regular basis.
After all of this reading, I wasn’t satisfied with the blogging scope and sequences that I had found. Although enlightening, and a reminder that I too, need to work at my ‘complex blogging’ status, I started to play with a Blogging Continuum. Here’s my visual in draft version:
Let me know what you think and for those of you who blog or work with students who blog, happy blogging and learning!
OTTOmaT3ch 
Ian Kelly
January 3, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Hey Christina,
I like the visual representation! We are just getting students blogging in my school and I am already beginning to ask myself what we need to do to take it to the next level. Looking at your visual helps to define that next step in the continuum. Now I am asking myself, “How do we unpack each stage of that continuum? What skills, strategies, and concepts will students need to continue moving along the continuum?”. I would love to hear any thoughts on this or any leads on good information.
Ian
slitech
January 4, 2011 at 9:03 am
Thanks for your comment. Here are some examples and resources for you!
Posting class work – this is a grade 2 class working on saving the Earth and speaking to it (the vocaroo links have been disabled).
Journaling – this article discusses the purpose, actions and resources in regards to journaling.
Posting links – this is a sample of a wiki that is just full of links.
Descriptive information with links – this is a local grade 2 class.
For analysis, reflection and synthesis, Edublogger has come up with some phenomenal student exemplars!
As well if you are looking at assessing student blogs, below are a number of resources to choose from:
1) Konrad’s making assessment personally relevant
2) Evaluation of levels of thinking in weekly threaded discussions rubric (look in Other Tools section)
3) A blogging evaluation rubric designed by one of Alec Couros’ teachers from U of Regina
4) A blog reflection rubric with a different weighting for each category
I look forward to hearing about your progress in this area. Feel free to post my Blogging Continuum in your classroom. (I have had several teachers ask if they could do this already!)
Nicole
wmchamberlain
September 9, 2011 at 10:26 am
I appreciate how much thought you put into this idea, but I must disagree with your conclusions. While posting class work may not be much of an invitation to great reflection, the ability for comments and replies to happen creates the opportunities for conversations.
As I wrote on my post Why I Require My Students to Blog, blogging allows us to create conversations which can lead to relationships. Simply allowing the opportunity for this to happens separates blogging from just posting. I suppose if I created a similar continuum, the more complex side would have more to do with the conversations than the content of the posts.
slitech
September 9, 2011 at 10:45 am
Thank you for your comments William! After much work over the past while in our Critical Thinking projects throughout the school division, I, too, have changed how I look at the continuum, especially the last two pieces of it. Creating those opportunities for conversations really changes the “just posting” to “blogging, learning and building relationships”. I will have to update that Continuum to reflect those changes.
wmchamberlain
September 9, 2011 at 11:03 am
I am constantly amazed at how my thinking has changed in just a few short years. The ability to read and converse with so many intelligent and diverse thinkers such as yourself has made me a much more thoughtful teacher. Who would have thunk it…