After taking some time this afternoon to look over some blogs that I have failed to keep up with I came across the School 2.0 Project.
This looks like a great project with plenty of promise…. Worth keeping an eye on over the coming months. Just hope they get a better looking website together soon. I also noted a number of posts from Dave Warlick from the Science blogging conference. Made me start searching for a great blogging example where real world experts are engaging with students, helping them with their learning. I am sure I could have had a better look than I ended up doing, but I couldn’t come accross anything worthy of note. So my question to you all is – Does anyone know of a blogging site where students are engaging with real world experts through their blog?
Let me know if you know of any great examples. This idea excites me!!
Blogged with Flock
Brett,
Will Richardson tells a compelling story about his students submitting their writing assignments through the blogs. Then he would invite professional writers to come in and critique and mentor the students. The thing is that just about every community has writers (newspaper, public relations, freelancers, etc.).
It was interesting, at the Science Blogging Conference, many of the scientists there were eager to find some way to contribute to K-12 education. It is certainly a much more complex issue than they assume. Educating middle and high school students is a much more complex endeavor than getting educated was 10, 20, or 30 years ago. But there are certainly potentials for making the classroom a village.
As I say again and again, Education in the 21st Century is entirely about “conversation!”
– dave –
The Illinois State University Dietetic Internship Blog Site was created as an online journal club for dietetic graduate students to facilitate discussions on recent research articles with area dietitians. The object for the students is to become familiar with current scientific literature on a variety of nutrition topics and to gain experience in gathering, organizing, critically evaluating, presenting and facilitating group discussion of the literature and the implications to practice. The area dietitians were invited into the blog discussion to further enrich the discussion and put real-life experiences into the practical applications of the research being discussed.
The journal club began in September 2006 with only eight facilitating graduate interns and a few dietitians. The students are incharge of summarizing and selecting a recent research article and then posting (and responding to) discussion questions relating to the article. Because of the positive response the first semester, all graduate dietetic interns and senior level undergraduate nutrition majors are members of the blog this semester (spring 2006). Several additional area dietitians join the blog each month. These members range from instructors, preceptors of the internship, and even alumni.
Because journal articles are selected each month from the Journal of American Dietetic Association, the dietitians participating in the journal club are eligible to receive one credit of continuing education for reading the specific article in the journal and turning in a self-study quiz. One problem I have ran into is with applying for the journal club to be eligible to give an additional credit of continuing education credits for paticipation. If a journal club were to meet face-to-face with at least three registered dietitians, the participating members would receive one credit of continuing ed for each hour of meeting. However, when I applied for our online journal club to offer this, I was denied and told ‘the club was not meeting in real time.’ (They also said no one had ever requested this type of continuing ed credit!) I am still pursuing this as I think the additioanl free credit of continuing ed each month for the participating dietitians is a great added benefit.
-Julie-
http://www.isudi.blogspot.com