New and Improved? It's about time!!

Its time. Time to get moving on this "blog" tool.

To date, as most of my students are acutely aware of, I have not really been consistent when it comes to blog posts and getting students to buy into this. I guess, the primary problem is time. Yes, time. Every teacher never seems to have enough of it and often it get away from us. Classroom preparation, grading, meetings and if we're lucky, learning. I'm no different. If I'm not grading papers or CG images, I'm updating the Schenck HS website or trying to figure how that new podcast might fit into my class.

Last year, I introduced blogging to my 2 Computer Graphics classes using Class Blogmeister. It went pretty well all things considered but it really needed to be used more often and for specific tasks, and/or conversations. Topics discussed were Copyright and Fair Use, new Web 2.0 tools, and a follow-up to an excellent trip to NESCOM. It was like pulling teeth to get comments and I didn't feel I gave it a real shot at success.

More and more schools and individual are creating and using blogs. I recently attended the MainEducation Conference in Augusta and one of the sessions I went to was about blogging. It was eye opening. In particular, I was very impressed with the student posts and the insightful comments of their peers. There seemed to be genuine, and meaningful collaboration taking place.

So, this year, I'm going to give it a go again. Website Development students already have Class Blogmeister accounts and will hopefully use them to collaborate for HTML coding. They have already begun creating avatars (a fun tool). Additionally, I hope to generate conversations about various website development tools and trends. Both my CG classes will soon have accounts and it is here that I hope to generate meaningful discussions related to imaging, animation, audio and videocasting and much more. With most, if not all, students already having MySpace or Facebook accounts already , this should be an easy transition. But as I have learned so often; having something everyone else has doesn't mean you have a true understanding how it works and how effective and interesting it can be.

Let me close with this thought. We live in a digital world and our children are more in tune to it than we might think. But they will need to learn how to creatively and responsibly use all the necessary tools for them to succeed in their chosen path. Watch these video presentations that really give us an indication what our world is and will be...
Mr. Ruggeri