Sue Connolly and Karen Heath have teamed up to bring a digital summer reading option to the students of Barre City Elementary and Middle School.  Rob Stalling has been our techical advisor for this project. 

Our best find was the site www.21classes.com where we could build a blog, with a template, that could be totally shut out to the outside and only allowed visitors with a user name and password.  It was important to us to find a site that would be safe for our students and free.  We wanted something that would allow our students access and that would not require email addresses.  The idea of no email addresses required is very, very hard to find. 

Our goal was to motivate students in literature.  We wanted to provide an option for students as they did their summer reading.  Barre City currently has a very low rate of summer reading completion.  Our hope is that when students are motivated, not only will their rate of completion rise but they will become better invested in thier studies and their lives.

This site is a great one in that you can have a class blog and then each student can have their own blog, attached to this blog, to use as you see fit.  Sue plans to have all students with a blog by the school year 2008-9.  Right now for this project, students will not be told that they actually have a blog site.  Although, if any figure this out and make one we certainly won't discourage this at all.  And, if they do, it will show up on our moderator site before being posted to the online version just like the students comments to the site.  Perhaps next summer, blogs can be included?

Once we found an acceptable site the rest seemed easy.  Karen's task was to write a letter to parents to include with the summer reading booklets given out with report cards.  Sue's task was to organize the site where students would be expected to discuss books.  Sue also was in charge having students pick pen names and making passwords for everyone. 

It was decided that students would have the option to go online and discuss their books rather than turn in a paper copy of their summaries to their new teachers.  This would be an option as we know that not all students have access to the internet.  We decided that we would not discourage students from making comments not to books but we would steer students toward discussions about books. 

Our site would allow us to moderate each comment.  Although it would be ideal to have students comments go straight to the site we did agree that moderation and a teacher allowing each comment to be posted would assure our students safety as well as would get them to access the site repeatedly rather than posting and not coming back.  Repeated access would do more to encourage discussion as apposed to just posting of homework.

Soon we will post our family letter here as well as info on how this site has worked. 

Cindy Mclean has agreed to join us in this project as a moderator and will comment on students work online.  We are  happy to have her with us!  Cindy will work with Sue as we show this site to students and let them try it before school is out.  We will together play this up to students to increase participation.  Our plan is to introduce this idea to students during TA time. 

Sue and Cindy will begin this process by getting students excited about picking a pen name.  Sue will use these pen names as user names so that students pen names will post under their comments.

Sue will get the projector and the mobile lab to the classroom.  Sue will use the projector to let students preview the site and explain it.  Students will then have the opportunity to use the laptops to try and post on the site.  Once students in one TA have tried we will invite other TA's to our classroom to try with our classes as student experts.

Wish us luck!

June 10

We have begun introducing this blog idea in class.  Cindy and I had our TA's meet together first and found out right off that TA time is not long enough for this.  By the time we show them what we want to show them there is only a few minutes left and computers don't load that fast.  So, I have been showing TA's during this time and playing up the idea, then letting them use 10 minutes of class worktime to post.  Already, we see great excitement about this site!  Not all students want to participate but many do.  They love the idea that it's only them that get this chance and they loved picking thier usernames.  We tried to have them pick pennames but they didn't really get this.  I think we either need to give up using 'pen names' or have one teacher introduce this and not accept usernames.  Not sure which now.

I created a link to the Aldrich Library website with the idea for students to borrow audio books online but now am wondering if I should take it off, despite the value of the information, as we told students quite specifically not to use anything indentifiable and we told them naming your school and town was indentifiable.  Because the site is closed off I have not deleted this post yet and still am contemplating the question.

We have notified 7th grade teachers that this is going to be happening and to expect hearing about it next fall.  We have made a letter specifically to this idea to parents with some rules and expectations in which we will place inside our summer reading booklet.  On this letter will also go home each students username and password for thier families.

June 11

I have received advice from our building tech person to instead of referring to the Aldrich library as our town library but a "regional" library.  I have taken out my wording of BCEMS and changed the site so that the link is still in.  Thanks Rob.

June 15

Wow!  I can't believe that I missed this one!  The title of our blog is 'BarreSummerReading' so when students go to our login page the first thing they see is a message that in bold letters say, 'BarreSummerReading'.  So, we are telling our students not to give our personal information and here we are doing it yet again.  The problem is, we are adults and not used to being so 'safe' with what we do online.  No wonder the students have such a problem wtih it.

We have so many posts on our website that you really have to scroll down a really long way to see the last posts.  While, for me, this is a bit awkward and irritating I do think that for the students it will make them feel like a part of a big thing.  The reason the students want to be here is because their peers are here.  Proof of this that so many students have begin to find out new options to do on this site.  The number one option that I have heard them speak of is the one where they can add other students to their page so that they can simply click on thier peers page.  This is happening despite the fact that most of their peers have nothing on thier page at all.  Students have asked me how they can comment straight to their peers in essence going out and around the main page.  I tell students I don't know.  I have noticed that you can leave comments straight to pages. 

We do have one student who has written a message straight from their page of a 'question of the week'.  I think this is a great idea.  When a student does post such a message it does make it to my management page first for acceptance just like any other post.  So, in addition to creating a place for students to discuss books we have provided a safe place for them to experiment with technology.  All of this from a free site and a teacher who knows nothing of HTML.  Oh, how wonderful is the computer! 

Oh, the part I should tell.  I found out that once you deny or accept a message you cannot ever do that again.  There were two instances I wanted to go back and edit the message.  One, was when I wanted to take out the words Barre City from a message left a week ago.  Now, the only way to edit the message is to totally it.  The other time I wanted to edit is when a student tried to leave an inappropriate message.  The first time he left the message, I denied it, spoke to the student and thought no more.  However, the second time he left an inappropriate message, I decided to call home and wanted to print off all the messages to be able to tell the parents the exact words and to mail to the parents.  I was able to print the new message before I denied it but was not able to go back and print the message that was already denied.  Sure wish I knew this before.  GRR.  In the future, I will print off all denied messages so that I have them if needed.  During the summer I can't really talk to the students but during the school year, I would have the message in print out while I speak to the student to make sure that they can see how easily I can make this available.  In this way, they can think really hard about doing this again. 

-Always learning--yes, we are always learning.

July 24

Our student responses have dropped off this month, which is ok since I have found it harder lately to make it to the site as well and lets hope our students are out enjoying that awesome weather.  As a follow up- the student with the inappropriate comments never tried such a comment again once I denied his comment.  Testing the limits as we say.  I was afraid that once school was out the students responses would get fluffier but we have actually found the opposite to be the case.  The comments have gotten meatier.  More time with them?  Actually read a book they wanted to?  Who knows.  I do think that the next time we do this we need to have a checklist or a rubric available for the students to see just what we are looking for on the site.  This year we really just wanted to see if the site would draw students and I think we have shown that it does.  Now we need to really dig down and make it clear and maybe even more friendly, fun and easy to use.

Aug 19

The summer is almost over.  Participation on our blog site really has slowed down now.  Still, a couple of students have posted by very few now.  It's time to get into the next years mode.  I think this project was worth doing but we certainly can't make online use a requirement over the summer.  I think it would make a great option for students with a bit more direction.  Since this summer we sent home a booklet telling students how to respond in writing to books we could also add to the site some sort of template for their online posts which would elicit more response from them.  Now, I have to create a list of those who posted over the summer for the 7th grade teachers.  This year, with it being simply a pilot, we will count each student that commented on a book in any form as reading one book over the summer.  Next year, we need to make them fill out a template of sorts to get the credit.