Building Community Thing 11 and 12

Sharing information online is a great way for others to learn about you and also to get information to an audience.  When someone comments on your thoughts it really validates what you are doing.

Students in Mrs. Kortlandt's publishing class at Crary share their creative works on a classroom blog called, The Graffitti Wall'.  (http://blog.oakland.k12.mi.us/graffitiwall/) Once the class has published their work they are able to read and comment (positive comments only) on each others work.  You can hear a pin drop on the carpet when these 8th graders are in the computer lab, they are so engaged reading the blogs.  Students comment on stories and poems written by other students that they normally would not speak to at school.  The experiance encourages students to keep writing not to mention that they pay really close attention to spelling and grammer when they know that their peers are reading their work.


I chose the Google Widget for my blog, you can use it to access many of the Google options for Internet Research

Hint for those of you who are having trouble embedding objects.  Click on the drop down arrow that says Post Options while you are composing your blog post.  Make sure the 'Use tags' radio button is checked.  This will allow the code for your widget to work when you publish your blog.