Blogging Mentor

Not too long ago I came upon this post by Sue Waters. She was looking for folks who were involved in education who might be interested in mentoring new student bloggers. Something about her post called out to me. Sue has taken a different approach from QuadBlogging, which seeks to facilitate commenting on school or class blogs by grouping schools from around the world in fours, or quads (hence the term quadblogging).

Sue’s approach is to match individual students with individual educators. Typically between 20 and 30 students are matched to one adult who serves as a mentor to those students. The students create their own blogs and Sue provides a series of challenges for them to respond to over a period of ten weeks. The mentor is tasked with visiting each student’s blog at least three times over the course of the ten weeks, commenting on posts and returning to continue the conversations, and reminding the students of the various challenges.

Here’s what I wrote when signing up to be a mentor:

Hi,

I’ve been teaching kids and adults about and with computers for many years, and this year will be a lower school STEAM Integrator at a school in Riverdale, NY. I LOVE to swim freestyle outdoors in the summer, practice yoga, kayak and walk. And I am excited about teaching Lego robotics using the NXT language, and Scratch and WeDo sensors!

I’ve been blogging since April 2007 athttps://neurons.wordpress.com/

Would like to mentor ages 8-11 (grades 3-5 or 6).

Cheers, Laurie

The students I am mentoring are 12 year olds in 7th grade. Blogging is a new experience for many of the students, and they have constraints such as time (like most of us!) and unfamiliarity with either the process of blogging or the platform they are using, or both. I am eager to see how they develop as bloggers over these coming weeks.

• http://mustangethanh.edublogs.org
• http://mustangbethh.edublogs.org
• http://mustangdevond.edublogs.org
• http://nick2297.edublogs.org
• http://gam2018.edublogs.org
• http://mmk2018.edublogs.org
• http://glb2018.edublogs.org
• http://mnw2018.edublogs.org
• http://ajd2018.edublogs.org
• http://dlh2018.edublogs.org
• http://hew2018.edublogs.org
• http://jac2018.edublogs.org
• http://asb2018.edublogs.org
• http://kat2018.edublogs.org
• http://anr2018.edublogs.org
• http://t-dog6.blogspot.com (I gave up trying to comment on this blog because no matter what I entered for the captchas, my entries were not accepted.)
• http://squirtmybuddy.blogspot.com (Having the same issue with commenting on this blog as with the blog listed just above. Frustrating!)
• http://www.hogwashe.blogspot.com (Same issue. Am having it with all the blogs created in blogger/blogspot.)
• http://piggy98.blogspot.com (See above comment. Sigh.)

Well, I have planning to do for tomorrow, so will return in a day or so to finish updating this post with links to the remaining 11 student blogs!

The Teenage Brain

I have not yet finished watching this conversation, but the teen brain has long intrigued me, and I appreciate the relaxed format of the conversation.

As per the youtube page: Vassar alums Lisa Kudrow ’85 and Abby Baird ’91 have a conversation about Baird’s research on the teenage brain and its implications for parenting strategies. Filmed before a live audience in the Alumnae house Pub on the Vassar campus.