Signs of Progress

Signs of progress are springing up everywhere...

1. We now have a Schoolnotes page set up as a front page to our blogs. We can send that address to our student participants and to the group of teachers who have volunteered to spend 15 minutes per month responding to student blogs.

2. Tammy and I are almost done with the blog rubric. We are drawing heavily on the 6-Traits indicators.

3. Ms. Su has gone in and changed the settings on each blog so that they will accept comments from anyone -- this is a necessary setting to permit our unregistered but invited guests to leave comments.

4. Most of our students are close to publishing their first post. A handful have already posted, and a couple are almost ready to publish their second post.

5. Most important of all, when I walked into Tammy's room yesterday to set up an RSS reader on her computer and import the students' site feeds, a number of her students cheered and said, "We get to go blog today!"

These definite signs are progress are bringing me some peace of mind as I try to juggle school responsibilities with planning an intercontinental, 9000 mile move. Seeing the students' excitement is giving all three of us ideas for how to use blogs with our new classes next year.