New year dilemma
The question is:
Do I start a new class blog for my new class in 2009 or do I continue with my class blog from 2008?
New blog
- Students will feel greater ownership
- Can start new blogroll with these students
- Can link old blog in the blogroll
Old blog
- Students will be able to refer to older posts
- Subscribers won’t need to change
- Change theme – need two sidebars for all links
What do you think I should do and why?
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I like the idea of starting fresh and agree that it would probably improve the students’ feeling of ownership. I think that the biggest problem with this though is mucking up your subscribers – which I wouldn’t want to lose anyway… so … with that in mind…
Maybe I would keep the same blog – but change the layout so that it looks like a fresh new blog – and you could have two blog rolls – one for the old blog and one for your new students… maybe???
Also, if you keep building on your old blogs after a few years it will be really neat to have a bit of an archive…
That’s probably what I would do…
Toni
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Continue, continue, continue.
Baseball is big around me. The greatest team is the Yankees. They have blue pinstripe uniforms. Whenever they get a new player, he always talks about what it is like to put on the pinstripes. The history, the prestige, the tradition. When my kids came in this year I got the sense that they already felt like they were walking into something special and from day 1. My kids felt ownership because they were now on the “team.” It was now their job to keep it going. That is where they got their sense of ownership from.
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I have exactly the same dilemma and I’m now inclining towards keeping the current class blog – particularly after reading your post and comments. I’m not sure I have built up any kind of tradition yet but perhaps that is something to look for… My class did get very good results and compared with other students so perhaps that is something to work with…
I also like the idea of standing on the shoulders of those who went before… and I know that a few of last year’s students are still reading the blog so some perhaps some mentoring will come out of it.
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I think it depends a little on what you are trying to achieve. if its group ownership – then a new blog that belongs just to this class will promote that feeling. I used to start a new discussion board every year for that reason. One year I didn’t – and the positive results amazed me. Students from the previous year continued to be involved in the ‘class’ but it didn’t seem to have any effect on the new students – IE they seemed to still assume ownership of the discussion as the current students. I didn’t notice any drop in group unity – but they were so acutely aware of the fact that they were part of a bigger group – there were students who had gone before them who had experiences and advice to share, and in turn at the end of the year, they too made sure that they would be able to continue to return to the discussion board to encourage the next class. To me one of the most significant changes that have taken place in the 21st Century is the shift from individual learning to group learning (you only have to look at the twitterverse for evidence of that). What will make a person successful in the 21st century (i believe) is not the ability to remember a body of knowledge and recall it at the right time (a skill that made one successful in the 20th century, and on exams) but the ability to participate collaboratively in an, evolving learning community. For that reason, I think initiating new students to an existing blog, or discussion board, or podcast community, is preferable to starting a new one that defines that one group of students within a particular space at a particular time. Well that’s my two cents. I could be wrong.
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I always start the new year with a new blog, but I have last years’ blog as a link in the sidebar.My students prefer to have ownership over something that is exclusively “theirs”. Funny thing is that I still have to moderate comments from blogs up to 3 years old.
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I agree with Toni and Paul!
You can change the theme, add new header etc but keep the same blog and all it contains.
As Paul points out, the kids have a sense of responsibility to take the blog (and its readers) on and keep going.
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Peter Reply:
January 11th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Keeping multiple blogs is extra work. Using the same blog will give your class a (small) sense of history.
Good luck!
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It’s been great to read these comments. I haven’t started a class blog yet, but plan to start this year. Your comments have helped me to realise the importance of creating a blog title that can be used by more than one group of kids. I’m going to think carefully about how I set it up so that I can use it with different groups over time.
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I’ve recently set up my 3rd annual class blog, but I am hoping it’s for the last time. This year I need a new one because I am changing providers (switching from Edublogs) and I am moving into a 2 teacher learning studio, so it will no longer be “my” grade but “our” grade. So we need “our” blog.
My kids in the past have appreciated the new blog – they’ve chosen the theme, widgets and much of the content. They know the visitor count and clustrmaps are just for their work.
But a new blog means you do lose your old readers – I’ve noticed that my 2007 blog got far more visitors last year than the 2008 blog, because word (and Google) had spread. A new blog means starting from scratch. Also, it’s a lot of work to get the new sidebars, links, theme, etc, set up to your liking – keeping the old blog solves that issue! We had past students visit the new blog by following the link, but I think they’d have taken more interest if it had been their blog as well.
I think I will keep last year’s wiki, but maybe delete some of the old pages.
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Hi Sue, I am going to keep my old blog going. However, I am in a unique situation in that teach across so many year levels that it probably does no look like a class blog anyway. There is a wealth of material accumulated there from last year, with tutorials and samples that any new students to me can use.
Unfortunately, I do not have any primary year levels next year so their links on my blogroll will be archived to a page with a heading that I am yet to think of. So much work has gone into my initial blog and like Andrew Douch above, I am sure I will continue to get comments form older, retired members.
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I like Paul’s analogy of baseball and class blogging. I think this is the approach that Al Upton did with the miniLegends. The class blog had the same URL but the students had their own blogs. Former miniLegends wear their badge with honor and network with new miniLegends to support them.
So taking this all into account perhaps this new group could come up with a name that could be used with all future groups and the blog title could be changed to reflect this since “Technology in our Classroom” isn’t a title for this type of tradition
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Thank you all for your comments and reasoning. I would love to continue the ‘tradition’ of blogging with my classes, but with only two more years before retirement maybe a new blog for this year’s class. I will certainly add this year’s class in the blogroll as with my other blogs, but a fresh start….
I also think I will run the class blog as a true class blog with the students doing a lot of the posting and only organizing the individual blogs later in the year.
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One way for the school to have a ‘traditional’ type blog would be for me to start one for the grade 6/7 students in total and run it similarly to the http://studentfriends.edublogs.org one we have going at the moment from the blogging competition. Each teacher and class could have the ownership for a fortnight and each year the new classes would just continue the tradition. Mmmmm …… brain is ticking over ….. great way to introduce teachers to blogging ……
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Have appreciated your post and the comments left behind. I am thinking of starting up a blog with an infants class and was debating whether to get a name for just this class, or one which would suit many classes. I think I like the idea of building up the blog over many years.
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hi my name is daniel my blog site is daniel1231.edublogs.org.
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