Third Grade Student Technology Mentors

I was fortunate to assist a third grade teacher as she had her students begin blogging by writing an essay on "My Christmas Wish". The teacher had two goals: the first was to have her students concentrate on using upper cases letters in correct places; the second was to increase her students' motivation with using writing to communicate with others.

There were hindrances to having a class of 25 third grade students use a blog. The first was the security issues involving blogging and complying with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). At the same time, parents' and administrators' apprehensions concerning children communicating online had be addressed. Therefore we chose to use David Warlick's Landmark Class Blogmeister as our communication tool because it has a myriad of security layers. For example, no outside person could read the students' blogs unless he knew the class password. Also, the teacher chose the feature which allows her to approve each blog and comment to a blog submitted. She also chose to use pseudonyms for the children.

Another difficulty derived from the tendency of Class Blogmeister to time out if it was open too long. We overcame this by first having the third graders type their stories using a word processor (MSWord). This posed a further difficulty because inputting their stories was time consuming due to the students not being able to keyboard well. One advantage of using Word is that it showed the students where they misspelled words and students had to choose the correct spelling. The students learned this function quickly and did surprisingly well editing their own work. Students were then shown how to save their work in the school's network.

Next they were taught to log in to Class Blogmeister (a link was put onto their class links page), how to input their articles using copy and past functions, and how to upload their blog articles for teacher approval.

To do all this in a lab situation with the entire class was a daunting goal. Therefore, the teacher and I taught a group of third graders to do these steps before the scheduled visit of the entire class to the computer lab. Using the computer in the classroom as a station, we taught one student who then taught a second. The second student then taught a third and so on. The teacher knew that these students were learning the aforementioned steps adequately because they were able to immediately demonstrate their learning. A cadre of ten students was thus taught the steps to produce a blog.

In this particular school, scheduled time is given each week for access to the computer lab. The students in the lab were shown (using a projector) the general steps of creating their blog. The cadre of students who were trained then helped others as they then began to type their articles onto Word and upload them into their blogs. The group did an excellent job in mentoring the other students while the students who were taught were very receptive to these young mentors.

The third graders' articles were commented on by eighth graders in the school. When the third grade students read the comments, they were extremely excited about having someone read and comment on their work. They also shared their stories with their parents. On a side note, the third grade students expressed a need to the lab supervisor to learn how to keyboard properly so that they might type their stories faster. They will be a group of motivated learners when this will be addressed the second semester.

In the end, this learning activity was a successful educational venture due to student experts who shared their learning with others.

On a side note, the teacher mentioned that, in the past, this class would moan whenever they were asked to do writing. Now, they are excited when asked to take out their blog journals and even remind the teacher when it is time to begin writing. Students now view writing as an opportunity to communicate.