This school year the students in my class used KidBlog to document their learning in Science. I had wanted to begin the blogging process all year long, but ended up waiting until the end of the school year to start. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, probably the fear of not being able to manage the technology.

In April, thanks to a generous grant from a donor, our students each received their own iPads to use at school. Having the technology literally at our fingertips I really didn’t have any excuse not to give it a try.

We began by blogging abut the Science experiments we were doing at the time. This was a perfect way to get the kids motivated to write. Not only were they really excited about our experiments, they were really excited about working on their iPads! I was amazed, by their excitement to write and to comment on each other’s blogs. Many students who struggled to write a sentence in their learning logs, were eager to write on their blogs.

I loved reading what the kids wrote, and was able to tell who was “getting it” and who I needed to reteach. I was able to identify basic skills that I needed to cover and was wowed by the ease that some of them communicated. I’m so glad that I jumped in and started when I did I would have really missed out on an opportunity to get to see into the amazing, creative minds of my students.