Publishing Work to the Web

Should teacher and student work be published to the web? This is a question asked on one of the blogs of our instructor, Dr. John Strange. While some have their concerns about privacy and protection, it seems the acclamation associated with students' achievements outweighs the most legimate of worries. One might think the best result of publishing students' work to the web is what others get form having done so. I, on the other hand, would emphasize the feeling of self-accomplishment the students themselves would feel.

The example given on Strange's blog is that of PS 22 Chorus in New York City, an incredibly talented group of young musicians whose work has been published to the internet. The group has received national attention and has been commended by several famous musicians.

There are a lot of students whose abilities and successes are rarely noticed. Their parents just don't recognize them. Teachers ignore them. Society doesn't even know they exist. For such students, a teacher zealously promoting their students' work can give them a great sense of self-worth, a worth about which many others do not care. The teacher himself is thus viewed as inspirational to the movitated students. The students can hear back from others who've seen their good work. These are just a few of the great reasons teachers should consider posting student work to the web.

I also visited a few other websites on which teachers have posted materal online.

Mr. C's Class Blog is a blog done by Mr. William Chamberlain in Noel, Missouri. Chamberlain is an avid advocate of integrating technology in teaching. On his blog, he not only offers student work and pictures of special occasions in the class and school, but he also has animations and other projects he has personally created. Even more, the page has a live video stream of his classroom, so others can watch and listen in on his classes. Mr. C is also encourages his students take part in the Comments 4 Kids program, which allows his tech literate students to encourage others by leaving comments on other students' blogs around the world.

Mr. McClung is an 8th grade science teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He also places student work and student-related work on his blog. He posts lab pictures of various objects placed on the microscope. He also teaches some social studies classes in which his students often submit work using Google Docs, a great resource about which many of us in our EDM 310 class just learned.

One other site to check out how to feature student (and your own) work is that of Ms. Cone at Hafford Central School in Saskatchewan, Canada (where according to the site, residents had a warm September at about 20 degrees--an interesting sidenote). This blog has student video (of simple footage while driving down a nearby highway), slideshows, Wordles, and more.

If you'd like to check out other blogs like these, you may search at http://www.edublogs.com/. Have fun.