Bravo Hawkesdale

isn't he cute

I realise that many people would have discovered ages ago what Hawkesdale College has been doing with blogging, but since I’ve only just looked through properly, I have to do my little rave because otherwise I’ll burst. It’s so fantastic!

The Hawkesdale K-12 blog : Techno7 (Our first year 7-12)
is about students and teachers blogging through the 7-12 school journey.
What’s on the blog?
• There’s a page for each subject, plus extras, eg. study skills, etc.
• Each student has a blog for each subject
• Each teacher has a blog following their Web 2.0 journey, posting stuff for students, or just ideas, findings, etc.
Example of a teacher’s blog:
Science teacher’s blog contains the following:
Her classes, camps and excursions, blogroll (blogs worth reading in her areas of interest), list of science resource links, list of science teachers and links to them, list of Web 2.0 resources discovered and tested by the teacher.
Other things on teachers’ blogs:
• Video of classroom activities on Teacher Tube;
• free to use images;
• podcasts made by students;
• student blog of the week;
• thoughts on topics related to curriculum or the world;
• e-safety
• interesting resources relevant to a topic of study, eg. blogs and links about China and Beijing related to upcoming Olympic Games – a blog is an interesting way to learn about something because it’s a personal focus on aspects interesting to the blogger, including images, videos, hyperlinks, etc.
For the students, the blog is a great way to get involved, personalize their learning, have an authentic audience (peers, school community), be part of the school community and possibly link to other, even global, communities, share ideas and findings, ask questions, find and share resources, look at what others are doing and get ideas from that, build confidence especially if shy to speak up in class.
The blog is a testament of a collective, ongoing learning environment that promotes engagement and sharing. The teachers continually express their excitement about what is happening at school, and reflect and rejoice about what’s happening. It’s inspiring!
I’d love to meet these people!

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