In an effort to more fully implement the philosophy of our two-year gifted program (grade nine & ten) and its discovery-based interdisciplinary appraoch to study, I began thinking – months ago, even – about ways to integrate Personal Learning Networks and social media into the English and Socials curriculum. With a history textbook that is more than fifteen years old (with especially dated chapters on the 1997 British Columbia economy and the Pacific Rim trade alliances) and young minds eager to take ownership over uniquely passionate and individual courses of study within the government’s curriculum (which accross both subjects is trending toward a critical thinking which emphasizes the vetting, sifting and production of content, information, and meaning inherent in many of the challenges and triumphs of navigating the read-write web and the shifting informational landscape), I have long anticipated this fall’s introduction to student blogging which launched yesterday in our school’s library.

With the help of Edublogs.org’s wonderful Getting Started resource, the class set out to draft either their Personal Mission Statement (incorporated from a lesson of Planning 10 in the previous block) or create  their About page on their blog (each assignment needs to be completed, but for those squeamish about the public nature of the form, the Mission Statement need not at this point be published publically).

Immediately the range of personality in our class has led to these first two  examples I am sharing below in the hopes that they might garner your comments, attention, or feedback for these young writers newly on their journey into blogging.

• Louise has made a visualliteral representation of her mission statement, and has left the posting as a page, acting as a great introduction to her personality, goals and sense of the world that will serve her future blog audiences.
• I love the way Katie has made an assorted list of interests, quotes, questions and ambiguities she intends to tackle this coming year (life…?). A thorough and engagingly written first post!

I will amend the post as further examples go up in the next few days, so be sure to check back!