Toy Video

My group's video made with McDonald's toys.

This Semester in a Nutshell

    What does it look like to teach reading and writing in an elementary classroom?   How do you use a Writer's Notebook?  What is a Multigenre Research Paper?  How do you get kids interested in writing?
     These are all questions that I wouldn't have been able to answer well at the beginning of the semester, and to be honest, I think I still have a lot to learn about what this looks like for me as a teacher.  However, I have made great strides this semester toward discovering the answers to these questions.  Both in my cluster classes and in my field placement I have gathered many strategies, methods, and activities I can't wait to try out in my future classroom.
     I think one of the most important things I learned about this semester is how crucial it is to give children choices in reading a writing.  Let them make choices not only about what they read and write, but how they demonstrate their learning to you.  I think it is also so important to help students make the connection between what they are learning in the classroom and their lives outside the classroom.  Giving students choices is a great way to bridge the gap that is too often present between these two.
     My field experience teacher was a wonderful literacy role model for me.  A lot of what we learned in class she does in her classroom.  All of her students have Writer's Notebooks in which they can write about anything they want.  At the beginning of Writer's Workshop, the teacher teaches a "mini-lesson." The kids are then encouraged to try what was discussed during the mini-lesson in their writing.  Recently the students have been getting one piece of writing that they got to chose ready for publishing, which they will do on the school laptops.  They are also working on a "How-to" book.  This writing is a little bit more structured than the normal writer's workshop, but the students are allowed to chose whatever they want to write their how-to book on.  My field placement teacher has taught me a lot about what reader's and writer's workshop can look like in an elementary classroom.
      All in all, I have learned the most this semester than I have learned any other semester here are IU.  I am very glad I have this blog to help me remember all that I learned this semester.  I guess I just hope that I won't forget it all by the time I have my own classroom.  I have learned so so much this semester that I hope my brain can retain it all and it will all come back when I need it to.  I think that right now I have a good foundation to build off of and now it just comes to me tweaking things while I figure out what works best for me and my students.

My animantion

    I made this video using http://www.xtranormal.com.  I think what I found really cool about this site was all the different languages that you could make a video in.  I think this could be a great tool for ELL students to use to practice their language skills.  They could make a bilingual video like I did in mine.

                                        

That means the pivotal question for teachers – a moral as well as a practical question – is whether they will treat students the way they, themselves, are being treated . . . or the way they wish they were being treated.

                                                             - Alfie Kohn, How to Create Nonreaders

Wow, that is a tough question to confront.  I have always been a huge supporter of student-centered classrooms.  I really do believe in letting kids control their own learning.  I think that is what makes life-long learners.  My mom always told me when I would get discouraged in school "It's ok Anna.  Right now you are just learning how to learn.  Not every way will be best for you.  Don't worry about memorizing facts, just learn how to learn."
     I feel so lucky that this viewpoint has been instilled in me.  But it also makes me nervous going into teaching.  What do I do with the kids who can't handle making their own choices even when given the opportunity?  What do I do when kids aren't interested in learning?
   I guess my question is: where is the balance?  The article says to bring kids into the decision making process when possible.  But how do you find the balance between being a facilitator, giving kids the push they might need, and letting them explore things for themselves and hold themselves accountable for their own learning?
     This article did give me some starting points though, and I think it will just be a process of figuring out what works for me in the classroom.

Creativity, Where did you go?

        Life can either fuel creativity or suck it right out of you.  I feel like as this semester has passed me by, my creativity has flown away with it.  Life is just simply too busy!
       This Multigenre Research Paper has been a breath of fresh air in the stingy environment of law papers and drab articles.  I love being encouraged to write things with true expression.  I loved exploring my topic through different genres.  I loved being cut loose from the chains that usually hold us down as writers in college.
      For my genres I wrote an "I am from..." poem from the perspective of a child that is denied access to an education.  I created an obituary for a child's dream of going to school.  I wrote a letter from a child that had been sponsored to go to school to her sponsor.  I also made a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting my life to the life of a child who does not have the opportunity to go to school.  My last genre was more interactive.  It's somewhat hard to describe, so I thought I would just post it up here:

            Only 84% of children that are primary school age actually attend primary school.   This means that approximately 1 in 7 children do not attend primary school.  Often times, it is factors that are outside of the children’s control that keep them from attending school.  Pick a letter, A, B, C, D, E, F, or G then go to the next page to see if you would get to go to school or not. (NO PEEKING!)

 

Read the life scenario that corresponds to the letter you chose.  Just like you had very little control over which life you received in this activity, many children have no control over whether or not they have the opportunity to attend school.  People are born into a variety of positions in life.  It is often where we are born that determines what kinds of opportunities will be available to us.  People do not have to live the lives they were born into, but it is much harder to break the cycle without an education.

A. You are 5 years old and you were born in Oregon, United States.  You have 3 older brothers who you like to play soccer with after school.  You just started kindergarten this fall and you love learning to read.  When you grow up, you want to go to Oregon State University and play for their soccer team.

B. You are 8 years old and you were born in Stockholm, Sweden.  You are an only child.  You are in the third grade and your favorite subject in school is art.  You love going to the art galleries and your dream is to one day go to Paris to study art.

C. You are 7 years old and you were born in Pakistan to a wealthy family.  You have one older brother.  After school your older brother helps you with your homework.  Your family just got a new computer that you love playing on.  You study very hard so that when you grow up you can become a computer scientist.

D. You are 9 years old and you were born in Seoul, South Korea.  When your father comes home from work at night you love sharing with him everything that you learned in school that day.  He is very proud of you.  You want to study very hard so that when you grow up, you can be a lawyer just like him.

E.  You are 10 years old and you were born in New Delhi, India.  Everyday you watch the other kids in their uniforms off to school wishing you could join them.  You don’t get to go because your parents keep you home to work on the small family farm.  You have dreamed of becoming a doctor, but you know that your dream will never come true and you will always work your family’s farm.

F.  You are 6 years old and you were born in Freiburg, Germany.  You love spending time after school at the park with your friends.  You are so excited because you have just started reading your first chapter book!  When you grow up, you want to be an author.

G.  You are 10 years old and you were born in San Miguel, Ecuador.  You just started going to school when a new school was built by an organization called Free The Children.  Before, your parents couldn’t afford to send you to school and your mother needed your help at home.  However, after Free The Children built a new school your parents realized the importance of education.  You want to go to school so you can be a teacher when you grow up.

  I am excited for our experience tomorrow at Templeton.  I think it will be great to have this interaction with real students.  They can learn from us, and we can learn a lot from them!

Seedfolks: building off of common ground

"...everybody left.  Buildings abandoned.  Men with no work drinking from nine to five instead, down there in the lot.  Always the sirens, people killing each other." -Ana (Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, pg. 7)

"It had been such a wonderful change to see people making something for themselves instead of waiting for a welfare check.  To see part of the neighborhood looking better every day, and to smell those good smalls of growing plants." -Florence (Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, pg. 85)

     It's amazing how a little bit of green can completely change a community, even bring a community together like it did in Seedfolks.  Last year I spent my spring break helping out in an after-school program and spending time with the people that live in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia.  While I was there, what shocked me the most was how little "green" there was.  There was trash and needles everywhere on the ground, but not trees or bushes.  The parks were all concrete and the little grass that was present was either brown or covered with trash.  I couldn't imagine growing up in a place that had more glass bottles on the ground than trees.

      Early this semester I went to see Majora Carter speak at the IU auditorium.  She is an activist and consultant that has played a huge part in the greening of the South Bronx and other cities around the country.  She spoke on how the greening of a city can truly transform a community for the better.  She said that crime rates and other social "problems" significantly decrease in cities that have parks.  Many of her projects provide employment and empowerment for the community members. While I was listening to her speak, I kept getting all these grand ideas in my head about partnerships between my future classroom and local activists and all these different things I could do to empower the students in my classroom through hands-on experiences.

      The garden in the book Seedfolks brought that desolate community together.  The people had something to take pride in, something that made their community visually beautiful.  The garden bonded them together and connected them with their physical location.  It provided them with healthy food to eat and a non-threatening place to meet the people that lived next door to them, the people they saw in the store and on the street everyday but had never thought about talking to.

Photo from www.greeningofdetroit.com

It makes me excited thinking about getting involved myself in projects like this, and then getting my students involved.  Something like this with a class could be a beautiful collision of life lessons, practical skills, and academic "standards."  And that, it what makes me excited to teach.

*another cool organization to check out is The Greening of Detroit.  They have been doing work like this in Detroit for over 20 years now!  They do a variety of youth and community educational programs and would a be a good resource for ideas of things to do with a class.

Poetry is more than the words on the page

"It's the poet inside of me who knows how to live.  It's the poet inside of me who is wide awake, and ready to embrace the beauty, the challenges, and the mysteries in life.  It's the poet inside of me who celebrates living on a daily basis, and finds extraordinary joys in very ordinary moments" (p. 10)

    This is an excerpt from Kalli Dakos' letter to young poets in the book Seeing the Blue Between.  I love everything about this quote.  It captures so much truth about poetry and what it means to be a poet.  Kids don't understand and are never taught that poetry is more than just the lines you write down on the page.  Poetry allows you to see the world in a way that is different than how most people see it.  This was the message behind many of the poet's letters in this book.  Observe the world around.  Use your sense.  Make inferences.  Give objects a voice.  Explore words. Make up words. Expose truth.  This is what being a poet is really about.

By Shell Silverstein, a great classroom poet.

   But how do we get there?  Very few students could just sit down and write an amazing poem.  We must help them along the way.  The Multigenre Research Paper book gave many different mini-lessons on poetry that can help kids practice their poetry skills.  It seems like it is best to give students structure in their poems to begin with.  Teach them to write acrostic poems, or outlined poems like the "I am" poems.  This will help them gain confidence in their poetry abilities.  Then give them free reign.  Have them read other poet's poetry.  Let them write in free verse.  I think this is the part that many teachers miss out on.  So many kids have bad experiences with poetry because all they have written are Haiku's and acrostic poems.  They haven't really become poets.  Give students chances to look at the world in a new way.  Challenge them to use their senses to write.  To break the rules of "normal" English.  Give them the challenge of painting a picture with their words.  That is true poetry.

   The key is though, as teachers, we must show them how.  This doesn't mean that you have to be a wonderful poet yourself, but be familiar with poetry.  Try and understand how poets view the world.  Have students read poems and talk about them and the perspective they give.  Very few people are just born poets, everybody has to learn at some point in time.  Teaching students to view the world as a poet is beneficial in more aspects than just writing poetry.  It helps students learn how to take in the world around them and be aware of what is really going on.

I Think You Two Will Get Along Quite Well.

    Explorer's Club meet MGRP, MGRP meet Explorer's Club. I think you two will get along quite well. You both involve both reading and writing.  You both encourage students to write about things that interest them.  And you both allow for different genres of sharing information than just a straight up research paper.
    The article "The Explorers Club: The Sky Is No Limit for Learning" by Premlata Mansikhani explains her process of exploring and research that she did with her ESL classroom.  In many ways it reminded me of the Multigenre Research Paper.  It was led by student questioning an creativity.  The students were encouraged to present their findings in more ways than just writing.  Some drew and illustrated; one girl made a puppet show.
   I think that this inquiry-based learning is especially great for ESL students.  I tutor two young girls from Korea who are learning English and one of their biggest struggles is that they just don't have all of the experiences with words and subject matters that they need as a frame of reference.  They don't know a lot of words or expressions because they have never heard or seen them used before.  But by engaging them in researching a question that they have, and supporting them throughout the research, hopefully they could begin building up their reference base.
    I do have a few questions about this process though.  What is the best way to support the kids while they are doing their research?  How do you find books that are easy enough for them to read and get good information from, but not too hard that they will get discouraged by attempting to read them? 

    On another, somewhat related note, I went home this weekend and went through a pile of stuff my mom is getting rid of.  I found tons of notebooks that I had written in from around 2nd grade to around 6th grade.  I have posted a copy of one of the pages I wrote.  It is my writing that I did after researching a question that I had always wondered about.  The memory of writing this is very vague in my mind.  I can't remember if I wrote it for school or just for myself.  Either way, it is good support that kids enjoy writing about questions that they have.  I just thought it was interesting that I was reading about this topic of inquiry and research in the classroom and then I stumbled upon my own early research paper and thought I would share it with all of you.

Small baby steps

   In both Elizabeth Hale's Crafting Writers and the article School Talk: Conferring in the Writing Workshop the focus is on teaching students small specific skills that they can use in their writing.  I think so often as teachers we see the "big picture."  We can see the potential that our students have and immediately we want them to be there.  We want them to learn everything all at once and want to fix every aspect of their piece of writing.  We get overwhelmed by how much we have to teach them.  I'm sure this does nothing but overwhelm our students.  When you go into a conference and say, "you need to fix this, this, this, and this," I'm sure that does nothing to advance a child's confidence or desire to write.
   It is much more manageable if we focus on small things that they are doing well, helping them improve strategies that they are trying out, and introduce new, specific strategies they can try.  Helping the students take baby steps as writers will help them improve.  It will build their confidence and give them realistic, foreseeable goals to work toward with their writing.
   One question I have is how exactly do you decide what is most important to talk about with your students during the conference.  How do you decide which skill out of the many skills that they might need to learn to introduce to them?

I am not a planner...

   I have another confession to make: I am probably one of the most unorganized people in the School of Ed.  Just last week I finally bought all of my binders and folders I needed for my classes.  Up until that point I had one notebook and one binder for everything.  Papers were everywhere.  It really was a disaster.  I still don't have a planner for this year.  Even worse, when I do have a planner I never use it.  I usually end up writing things in after I have done them just so it looks like I use it.  Pathetic, I know.
   Using a planner is just not the way I am wired.  I keep things pretty well organized in my mind, but I also hate having a scheduled planned out that I feel like I have to stick to.  I am a very "fly by the seat of my pants" type of person.  A huge part of the excitement of life is not knowing what is coming next.  I was a counselor at an overnight camp this summer.  I was the counselor that never wore a watch; I started off with a Dora the Explorer watch, but she drowned in the pool on the first day of camp (I took that as a sign that I didn't really need one).  My cabin was always that last ones to arrive to different events, and I was always the last one to turn my lights out at night.  My campers would ask me what we were doing next and I would always tell them "It's a surprise!  You'll find out when we get there!"
   However, school is much different than camp.  Sometimes my laid-back personality scares me a little bit going into the field of teaching.  Often times, kids really need structure to help them focus, especially the littler ones.  I'm afraid I won't be able to provide them with the type of structure that they need.  How much structure do kids really need anyway?

An example of a tool I could use to help organize my classroom

   As I was reading through Crafting Writers by Elizabeth Hale, it really hit me how organized most teachers are and need to be.  I was so impressed how it mentioned how organized all of her conference sheets were and the template of a form to fill out after conferencing with your students.  Most teachers are already pressed for time, so you can't really afford to waste time looking for student papers and records.  It just helps things run more smoothly when there is organization.
   At the same time though, I think learning is pretty chaotic, and should be in some sense.  If you truly have a classroom that is student-centered, I think it probably will look a little bit crazy because students may be doing different things at the same time.  They will be discovering things through having experiences.  I think that I can use my free-spirit as a strength in the classroom.  I will be willing to adapt my plans to what my students need.  If we get off topic, but learning is occurring, I think that is ok.
    This isn't to say though that I shouldn't plan anything.  I know that it is something that I really need to work on.  I think I will have to find a good, loose organizational system that leaves room for my spontaneity, but still provides structure that students and myself need.

How on Earth Did I Learn All This Stuff?????

       How on earth did I learn how to write?  Reading through Crafting Writers  by Elizabeth Hale made me think back to the good old days when I was in elementary school.  I think I remember doing some of the mini-lessons that she talks about, but really it all seems very fuzzy.  I get what I actually did confused with what the teacher that interned with in high school did with her elementary class.  She was very intentional about teaching students how to make their writing more interesting, especially their stories.  I remember her teaching lessons on how to capture the attention of your audience, how to use sounds in your writing, and how to add details.
       I do remember in second grade working on writing a detail paper.  Each year in my school district, we would spend a week writing a paper that went in our school records.  In second grade we had to write about our favorite food and describe it using all of our different senses.
      I feel like there is a very big disconnect though between the type of writing you do in elementary school and what you do for the rest of your life.  Most of what I can remember about elementary school writing (probably through 4th grade or so) has to do with writing narratives and fictional stories.  After that, it seems like most of my writing has been academic papers, book analyses, research papers, and things of that sort.  Very rarely do I feel like I got to be creative with my writings except for a few assignments in my AP English class.
    So, my question is, did all of that intentional instruction (or "teaching crafts" as Hale would say) on how to make narratives and stories interesting help me with my academic writing somehow?  They are such different genres of writing.  Maybe the exposure and experience with language helped my master how to manipulate words to have them say what I want.  I could have transferred that from fun writing to academic writing.
    I guess I just wish that there wouldn't be such a drastic cut off.  I wish that middle school and high school teachers would allow students to still enjoy writing, to just write for the sake of writing.  I think though that because this isn't always the case, it is so important for elementary teachers to expose their students to writing as an art form.  Then, maybe, when they do get into middle school and high school, they will have the desire to be creative with writing on their own.  By teaching our students these specific skills, we can help them for the endless amounts of academic writing that is headed their way, as well as direct them toward a life-long passion of writing and an appreciation of the skills of a good writer.

Choices Choices Choices...

            Indecisive.  That would be one word that I would definitely use to describe myself.  However I am an odd type of indecisive; I either can’t make a decision because there are too many choices, or I have a very strong feeling about something and I go with it without looking back for one second.  I am always the last to order when I go to a restaurant and I usually make up my mind by doing a last minute round of "eenie meenie minie moe."  Then there are other times that I just pick something without really thinking about all the options and just run with it, kind of like my decision to come to Indiana from Michigan.

            Projects like the Multigenre Research Paper are like honey my lips – sweet, but sometimes for me it is too sweet that it makes me uncomfortable.  I love the freedom to be able to choose any topic that I want to write about.  I love that there are no restrictions on what I can chose to learn more about, that I get to spend my time researching something that makes me excited.  At the same time though I am so overwhelmed.  I have so many different passions and interests that I don't know where to begin.  I feel like a little kid with a sweet tooth that is walking into FAO Schweets for the first time.  I'm sure that with time though I will be able to narrow it down and make a decision that I will be excited about.

            It's good for me to be experiencing this because I am sure that there will be kids in my future classrooms that feel just like I do.  I am a big supporter of letting kids have a lot of freedom with their learning, writing especially.  I think it is such a valuable experience for kids to have being able to pick a topic that they want to devote time to learning and writing about.  I love that in the Multigenre Paper the students also get to communicate their research in different forms of writing.  Information is all around them and by them learning how to communicate through different genres of writing they will also be learning how to learn from different genres.

             So my question is: How much structure is too much, and how much is too little?  I think the answer will vary from student to student.  There will be kids that get an idea and just take off, and then there will be other kids that need more help discovering their passions and how to find information and then communicate that information.  I think this Multigenre Research Paper can cater to the needs of a large variety of students.

S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G

    I wus uh reele bad speller az uh kid (and I still kind of am).  In fact, I have a confession... the only test I ever cheated on was a first grade spelling test.  I vividly recall sneaking a peek around my neighbor's cardboard cubby to see how she spelled the word "cup."  It's silly I know, who cheats in first grade?
    I can distinctly remember another time in kindergarten when my friend asked me how to spell the word "of." I really had no idea, but, in fear of looking unintelligent, I replied in the most confident voice I could muster, "of....... is spelled a-v."  Her smart reply was, "Nope, you're wrong. It's o-f."  Well, let me tell you I sure felt stupid! But, I didn't let that get me down. I still used the "think-spelling" strategy we were taught and continued to enjoy writing despite my ability to spell well.
    In light of some of my struggles in first grade mentioned above, the next year in second grade I was the only student to get every single spelling word right every single week on our spelling tests.  The thing was for those tests, I didn't really learn how to spell.  I did learn how to memorize which letters in which order formed which word.
     So we have come to the question, how important is spelling anyhow?  Well, I don't think there is a black and white answer.  I think it depends on the situation and the reason behind the writing.

Quick Thoughts on Wilde Chapter 6 "Developing Spelling Strategies":
*Three parts of spelling: knowledge of words, knowledge of spelling patterns, and spelling strategies.
*I'm glad we've moved past just asking the teacher or looking up a word in the dictionary
*I love these ideas:
  -helping students answer questions for themselves.
  -willingness to try out spelling, focus on fluency rather than correctness
  -introducing kids to the process and not expecting a perfect outcome.
  -help kids understand the reason behind correcting spelling (courtesy to the reader).
  -as they grow older they need to move past invented spelling

  "When in doubt, ask the writer where the spelling came from"

                                                                 -Wilde p. 98

     I think this is a good idea even when you are not in doubt about whether they have a learning disability.  In my opinion, ask students why they came up with a certain spelling gives them a chance to really think about the letters that they wrote down and how they work together.  It gives them the opportunity to think more critically about  their spelling.

The Wilde Article basically talked about five strategies that are relevant to spelling.  Here is an overview of them and some expansion on how to use them.

FIVE STRATEGIES:
1.) Placeholder Spelling: writing something that one knows isn't correct. or close, but they write it anyone just to get something down on the paper.  Good to use when you don't want to lose your train of thought or you are in a hurry and it doesn't matter if it is spelled correctly.

2.) Human Resource Use: asking someone else how to spell a word.  Ask students to come up with their own spellings first, or help them through the process.  Encourage students to help each other.

3.) Textual Resource Use: using a dictionary or a print source to find out how to spell a word.  Fill your classroom with written text that students can copy from.  It's also important to teach kids how a dictionary is organized and how to use it.

4.) Generation, Monitoring, and Revision: pretty self explanatory; coming up with, checking whether it looks right or not, and editing your own spelling of a word without outside help.  

5.) Ownership: you have mastered the spelling of a word and can write it without thinking about it.  Encourage students to build up their vocabulary and their repertoire of words they know how to spell.

Now it is just a matter or learning how exactly it is best to use these in the classroom.  I think the though part is that is varies with each year and each kid, and isn't that true with basically everything involving education...

Literacy Dig: Starbucks

Starbucks in the Union.  One would expect literacy to be occurring there. Coffee shops have long held the reputation for being a place for college students to "study."  I use the term "study" loosely because a majority of the people there were on their computers, which in our day and age would be the appropriate thing to bring if you were studying.  However, a very large portion of those people on their computers had Facebook on their screen. 
    Facebook is a very prominent vessel of literacy in our culture.  People are reading and writing and communicating.  They are looking at pictures and videos and sharing their thoughts.  It's basically like one universal blog. People can read things that are informative, funny, thought-provoking, deep, and nonsense all in the same place.
    In addition to Facebook, there were people there who were reading articles online, I would imagine for a class.  There were people reading their textbooks.  I noticed very few people reading something such as a novel or magazine for pleasure, so most of the literacy taking place was informative.  Although, I imagine that while being informative, if someone was really enjoying what they were studying, reading the article could also be pleasurable.
    The writing that I observed was note-taking.  Students jotting down key points, things they need to remember, and maybe even their thoughts on what they were reading.  I did not observe anybody with anything that resembled a journal, although I have noticed this many times before when I was in a Starbucks. 

Boy with computer, book, and headphones.

 

   All of these forms of literacy I believe are common of, but not necessarily limited to students.  Very rarely do you see someone who is not in school sit down with a text book and take notes.  You may encounter some professionals who sit down and read different published articles, but not with the same intent as the people in this Starbucks.  These people are reading because they were assigned to read.
   One thing that I did find interesting was that most people were multi-tasking, meaning they had a book and notebook open next to them, their computer open in front of them, and their head phones in.  It's amazing to me how much our brains can process all at the same time.  There are many people that claim that listening to music helps them concentrate on their readings or their work in general.  I think that would be something interesting to look into and maybe apply to the classroom.
    As a teacher then it is my responsibility to help my students develop the skills that they will need to be able to extract important information from informative pieces of writing.  It is also important to teach them how to make real-life connections with what they read, because reading just to read words off of a page is worthless.  Whatever is read, students should be able to understand the meaning behind the words, both to be able to gather the information that is necessary for them to know and so that they can truly enjoy reading.
     It's important to teach students how to write so that they can have that as an outlet to process the information they are taking in.  Even being able to summarize key points into writing is a way that the brain can process and better retain information.

Thoughts on "That's online writing, not boring school writing!" by Shelbie Witte

      This article is not the first one that I have read that advocates for blogs being used as a way for students to grow in their literacy skills.  The one problem that always catches me is resources.  Not every school has enough money for computers for the students, especially in the times we are living in with all the recent budget cuts.  But, if we get past that I really do like the idea. 
     Using blogs connects their life out of school to their life in school.  For some reason, it seems like homework done on the computer doesn't seem quite as difficult or dreadful as doing a worksheet.  Maybe it's because so much of kids lives these days outside of school are spent on the computer.  Anyways, the use of a blog allows them to communicate their thoughts possibly to the entire world, and there is something very powerful about that.  It's not just them communicating their thoughts, but it's the possibility that someone could communicate back.  Communication back is key, I believe, because then the student's don't feel like their writing is futile.  They aren't sending their thoughts out into the giant black abyss of the internet to just let them sit there.  Instead they could get a response within minutes of posting their thoughts.
     However, I think there is something beautiful that is being lost as we move into the digital world.  There is nothing quite like receiving a letter that you have been waiting for... the anticipation makes its arrival all the more appreciated.  The feeling of the keys clikc-click-clicking beneath your fingers does not give the same satisfaction as the pen gracefully gliding across the smooth, blank paper.  Going back and adding something in or simply deleting a few words or a whole paragraph does not show the same effort that a carrot insert or a scribbled out line on a page does.
     With all that said, I think I am just being old-fashioned.  It's not about me, it's about the kids and getting them to enjoy writing.  It's about getting them hungry to write every day.  When it comes down to it, thoughts are thoughts no matter how they are communicated.  Whether they are found on a computer screen or a journal made of banana leaves, the words are coming from the students' minds and being communicated to the reader.  They get to express themselves and process life through the written word.  All that really matters is that students are growing in their literacy skills and are learning how to use and enjoy writing.