Reflection on Thing 3

Kalyani's Blog:

I feel blogs can be used very effectively at Creative Montessori Academy. The fact that it is a small school gives us an advantage to develop a learning community that is easy to keep up. We can have student-learning community shared and controlled by teachers. Teacher-learning community shared and controlled by teachers and administration.
· There are so many ways that blogs can be used in a classroom. Have students blog about a current issue, about a specific piece of writing, or some question that comes up in the course. Students can share opinions with each other and support each other with commentary and answers to questions. Students can have a very wide audience or can have each other as their potential audience. It helps them to see each other’s work, which in turn might help their own learning. This way integration of all subject areas is easy to implement.
· Times when students are absent, they forget to check what was done in class the next day. With a blog that contains the information for each class, students can see what was accomplished the day they were gone and complete the work before they even return the next day. The challenge here is for the teacher to post updated information.
· For administrators it can be a very useful tool. School forms and common documents can be posted. All communication can be posted in the blog. Teachers can share teaching ideas and lesson plans. Principal can post meeting schedules and agendas. The professional learning community can use this to interact with each other.
· At CMA we use Montessori methodology/ philosophy to teach the traditional GLCE. New parents always have so many questions in this direction. We can create a blog that allows teachers, principals and parents to communicate with each other. …… the possibilities are endless!