Rethinking Digital Writing Club

Thanks to Margaret Simon from Reflections on the Teche for providing this space to share how teachers are using technology in their classrooms.  Please visit her site to see what others are doing.

Tomorrow is the beginning of Digital Writing Club.  This is the second year I've hosted the after school club.  I decided to open it up to fifth graders only, so that I am able to work with the kids more easily.  

To get started, I created a website using Weebly for Education.  It will be our home base.  I created a class and added my students.  Tomorrow, they will design their own web page and complete the  interest survey that I created in Google forms.

Because I've been reading and talking about Education 3.0, I am rethinking what our workshop will look like.  We will definitely be sharing our work on Twitter and working to connect with others outside our group.   I'm also going to use the information that I gather from the survey to do a couple of different things.

Our first two meetings will be planned by me.  I mentioned that we'd be creating webpages tomorrow.  Next week, I'm going to borrow from #clmooc and ask the kids to make something that will introduce themselves to the group.  I learned so much from the maker summer and I want to share that with my students.  

After that, I envision the kids working on creating what they want to create.  Our mini lessons may be led by me or by another student or students who have expertise in an area.  I'd like to work on some design elements with them and I'm sure that the kids will have ideas of their own.  I am envisioning small groups forming organically as the kids find common interests.  In addition, I will seek mentors and other experts and house that information on the homepage of our website.  

I imagine there will be blogs, videos, presentations, digital stories, comics, etc.  I want the kids to make decisions about what format best fits their needs based on their audience and purpose.  

I'm excited about the possibilities, and I'll be sure to share with all of you.

Please share if you've done anything similar with students or if you'd like to connect with us.  Leave your class' twitter handle in the comment section and we will definitely connect.