Student Bloggers: Great Examples

Want to see some great examples of student blogging? Visit the Possibilities Abound blog by Lani for her 3/6 post: There's something happening here!

Not only are there great examples of high school students blogging about their learning in pre-calculus class (great reflective posts), but there's a mini-story in the post about a 5th grader elsewhere posting a comment and the subsequent connection between the high school students and their new friend, Eddie. Very inspiring!

And in many of the posts (please follow the links -- there are many great gems to uncover), the students write about how much their teacher's use of an interactive white board has changed their class and how they are now using the white board as well as the teacher.

A tip of the hat to Jim Gates' TipLine blog and Anne Davis' EduBlog Insights for pointing me to Lani's post. Jim's post actually references Lani's post via Anne's Tell the Stories post.

And that's why it's call The Web. BTW, you'll see Jim's and Anne's posts in my Shared items listed to the right. Lots of other goodies there that I haven't blogged about -- yet...

Kids Making a Difference: Alex's Lemon Drop Blog

Check out Alex's LemonDrop Blog! This is all about kids making a difference. Talk about authentic learning, this is it! Be sure to visit the blog and share your support and encouragement.

This blog accompanies the Alex's Virtual Lemonade Stand Project -- an Internet2 video conference project for grades K-12. This project is inspired by Alex Scott's heroic desire to do for others even as she battled cancer herself. At the time of her death at age 8 she had raised over $900,000 for pediatric cancer research. Since then the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation has raised more than $10 million for childhood cancer research. Alex attended Penn Wynne Elementary School in the Lower Merion School District (LMSD), and students and teachers at Penn Wynne initiated the virtual lemonade stand video conference last year and are hosting again this year for an even bigger project!

The theme of this videoconference project is "Kids helping kids make a difference" in conjunction with Global Youth Services Day. Each participating school will host a lemonade stand to raise funds for cancer research as well as participating in a variety of other educational activities. The schools will collaborate with each through the Alex's LemonDrop blog and hold a kick-off spirit rally video conference and a closing project collage video conference event.

Just announced today, newly-elected Congressman Joe Sestak (PA, 7th Congressional District) will speak with participating students in the closing videoconference from the Internet2 Corporate Offices in Washington, D.C.

Lager for the Blogger

I was having dinner tonight with a couple of colleagues having just arrived at Hershey, PA, for the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Exposition and Conference (PETE&C) and across the bar from us was Will Richardson! We had been in one of Will's workshops at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit (MCIU -- Norristown, PA) last November, and we have him scheduled for a workshop in our district (Lower Merion School District) the end of this month.

We couldn't resist. The bar had Sam Adams' Winter Lager on tap, so we sent a lager to the blogger. Will joined us for dinner, and we had a great conversation. Be sure to read Will's blog if you haven't already -- weblogg-ed.