Andrea Hernandez is a 2nd grade teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. In her blog post titled, Using iPads to create eBooks with 2nd Grade, she gives her experience with her students on their creation of an eBook. The students decided to write their book on "A Week in 2nd Grade". The students all brainstormed different ideas and jobs that each student has. It was then decided that each student would be responsible for writing and illustrating one page in the book.
By using the Book Creator app, available on iTunes, the students were able to easily create their eBook to share with friends, family and teachers. Don't you just LOVE technology!! How exciting for these students to be able to create a book and then have it easily accessible to those that they love and care about. I can just feel the sense of accomplishment for these students.
Although, I was not able to figure out how to embed the eBook on this post, I am able to share the link so that you may view the book yourself.
My comment to Mrs. Hernandez discussed my excitement for her students and how I would love to be able to do some of the same projects with my son who is currently in 1st grade. His class is currently writing a book, however, I am not sure if they will be using the iPads to finalize this project. I will most definitely be sharing this app and idea with his teacher.
The second comment that I made on Mrs. Hernandez's blog was on her post titled, "Who Moderates Comments on Student Blogs?". She had a situation where a parent sent her an e-mail asking for reassurance that her child's school blog had adequate spam filters. Apparently, the student received a product advertisement and the student deleted this post as she should have. The parent asked Mrs. Hernandez if she could approve/disapprove all comments before they became visible to the student. All of the student's blogs use Akismet as a spam filter, which seems to be very successful in filtering material that should not be viewed on their blogs. However, as with almost anything, there are on rare occurrences advertisements and such which make it past the filters. The occurrence with the particular student discussed in the post was one of only a handful that had inappropriate comments. So what did I think on this subject? Should students be set as administrators over school blogs?
As stated in my comment, I think that students have to be given more responsibility when it comes to internet safety. Children of today were born into a world of technology, whereas, most of their parents were not. We all know that there are internet dangers, however, it is the responsibility of the parents and teachers to guide them to make the appropriate choice. The child, for example, in the scenario given knew that the comment in her blog was inappropriate and took it upon herself and deleted it. The child then told her parent about the comment and the parent, immediately sent an e-mail, expressing her concern. However, I do believe that setting students as sole administrators would have to be determined by age and maturity level of the class. I would not want my 1st grader to be the sole administrator for obvious reasons. If I were teaching or the parent of a 6th grade, I may reconsider. Mrs. Hernandez handled the situation very well though. She was able to actually speak to the parent at a school function and were able to determine that the spam situation was only a one time occurrence for the student. EdTechWorkshop has some great techniques at discussions on the blog. As Mrs. Hernandez says, "Learn. Reflect. Repeat".
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