Dear Parents,

Welcome! I want to cordially be involved with your student’s development into our future. Our classroom will be incorporating a great technological advantage that our generation didn't get to use in the most efficient way: blogging. "Isn't that dangerous?" "Is it really necessary?" Will my student get anything out of this?" All of these questions and more will be answered in this first composite blog post I have developed.

What exactly is a blog? A blog is a comment based website that has specific topics to talk about. For this blog, your students are going to be discussing their classroom curricular topics such as explorers, the planets, books, math problems and much more. Students will be able to view the question(s) and also their classmate’s answers to help them think about their topic. Think of this site as an extension of our classroom and its discussions- because it is.

Way is this important to my students and their education? What happens in a classroom discussion? Generally the same 6 or 7 students answer and provide their ideas, and when asked to recall what was said, the students forgot to take notes to help them for a quiz or test. Blogging, however, is the exact opposite of that. Each student is required to respond; so those who don’t normally get a chance to express themselves get heard and give their ideas to their peers. Also the students have a hard copy of what everyone has said in the discussion. This gives them the chance to look back at something that they might have missed and gives them the opportunity to think harder on what has been said.

Well, can my student fall victim to online praying? NO! With all of this great technology has come great security systems that keep the users safe from anything dangerous. To post on this blog you have to have clearance from myself only; not even the administrators are able to log onto the blog unless I give them permission. I will only be allowing the classroom onto the site, no one else. I will also be going over strict blog writing instructions to prevent any cyber bullying that may try to be present in any of the discussions. I also look through each of the posts and monitor for everything that is not school friendly.

For a focus project for our blog, the students will we discussing the invention of flight. Each student will take a specific flight "machine"- Leonardo’s helicopter, the Kitty Hawk plane, Zeppelins, etc- and develop a comprehensive report on that machine. The project will be completed in stages, answering questions about their research topic. At the end of the semester the students will compile their research and, with my few connections, our class will get a spot in 'Popular Science' magazine covering the history of flight (cool!).

I know that it is hard to watch your student struggle through something, but this blog is intended to help your student learn and develop, not just get work done. So I have made it only possible for students to post on this blog. I have a similar blog set up for parents, administrators, and other parties to comment about the week’s topics and posts, but I want the first site to be all about the students. You will be able to look at the original student lead post, but you cant comment on it. The posts and comments will all be available to see, you just can’t comment yourself.

Remember, this blog is not about you. While you may be smarter in some areas, I want the students to get the most out of their peers, not their parents. The students will have major topic posts due every two weeks, and then smaller posts whenever we have a topic in class that I want them to discuss and think about more.

On a special note, for those who are not able to have their child post from home, I would like you to get in contact with me ASAP so that I can set up a schedule for your student to use the computer in the library or the classroom. Not having a computer at home is not an excuse for not turning in assignments. I expect every one of my students to do their work; and I know you do too. I will have a list of when all the postings are due (the major ones) on the blog calendar as well as our classroom website that has a link to our blog site. If you ever forget where our sites are located, they are under the schools main website, under teacher sites.

I look forward to hearing from your students and watching them grow through the blog site. This site is all about developing the students and I believe it to be starting out that way nicely.

Mr. Shannon