Monday 26 January 2009

Getting my son connected

Today I started a blogspace for my son (mr8) to help him get motivated with his learning. He unfortunately tends to lacks in confidence with his written work and struggles a bit with his math. I want him to feel excited about learning and using the internet and so am sort of conducting my own experiment. I believe it will also give me a great opportunity to work alongside him and strengthen our relationship (rather than always nagging about school work). This will be our portal to learn and discover together.

I want mr8 to be able to do everything to do with posting to his blog. I have initially helped to set up the layout of the blog (but he has chosen the theme and widget counters). He has written his first welcome message and is eager to get on his blog. He doesn't understand that first of all he needs to think, plan,reflect what he wants to put on there and what he needs to learn in order to do so. We have made a list of things like 1)take a photo; 2)upload photo from camera onto pc; 3)upload photo into blogpost; 4) write about it; and 5)publish it. With all this eagerness can you believe that I've got no charged batteries for the digital camera! What a way to put a dampner on the start of his IT journey (sorry son).

There is going to be learning journey for me too. Firstly to not give in to temptation to touch the keyboard and secondly to be patient. How is it that I'm more patient with the kids at school than my own children? So I'm hoping it's going to stregthen our relationship too. The first learning I've had to do is to work out how to use PhotoStory3 for windows. This is a free download. I'd heard of it before (at least 3 years ago now,but never used it). I quickly downloaded the programme and within ten minutes had quickly put this trial clip together. Now mr8 will be able to have a go and use the saved photos we have on our computer to make a Photostory to post to his blog. You can visit my son's blog here. Below is my first trial of using Photostory3:

4 comments:

Belinda said...

Hi Justine
I also helped my 10 year old daughter start up a blog last year. She was having real problems getting motivated with homework and the blog has definitely helped. She doesn't often upload posts other than homework but I'm hoping that will change over time so the content becomes more interesting! Hope Piers enjoys his blog!

Cheryl said...

Great idea Justine. Many children find there is real power in this and suddenly see how they can communicate in new ways. It's of much more use than writing for no authentic purpose.

Heheboy said...

Good stuff Justine, I'm following suit with my younger daughter. She struggles with her learning but is keen to do anything online and loves to share. Will be sure to show her your sons' blog to get her started.

Patti Harju said...

Great idea!

Do you have a class blog set up yet? I know you said you don't begin school until February. My 2nd graders would love to leave a welcome to school message for your students! They can't wait to start commenting on your class blog. Thanks for all of your comments on ours.