An unsolicited (those are the best kind) Web log compliment came from my Social Studies Supervisor yesterday in a meeting with mentor teachers, and I think it was a significant moment in the “molecule moving” at our school. He’s the instructor of the Honors Advanced Sociology class and he used the Web log to encourage asynchronous conversation about various topics that he posed. He was really struck by the students answers to the final question about stress and high school. In yesterday’s meeting, he said “using a Web log gave not only gave students the opportunity to really think through and reflect on their answers, it gave me the benefit of archiving those answers and bringing them to a wider audience,” (or something to that effect.) He said he was struck by the depth of their very personal responses, and he felt that the publishing of those responses online was an important difference. I need to do more thinking about his thoughts and read those student reactions more closely, but it’s really nice to hear that type of validation.
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