This post has been written on “Blogging has definitely changed the way we learn in Room 7” as part of The Edublogger’s Share Your Blogging Experience“ .

The Super7Scooper Blog is a classroom blog that has been developed firstly by the class teacher and then evolved by the children working in Room 7 as they took on ownership of their space. The blog shares our daily learning experiences, exemplars of our different levels working within our classroom and also acts as a reflective journal that we have referred back to regularly.

Initially, it was started as a teacher driven tool as a vehicle for modeling during shared reading and writing sessions and as a window for families and friends to share in learning activities. Over the year, the ownership has shifted from the teacher to the students who now decide what is blogged and which web 2 tools they use to publish.

The aim of this blog was two-fold. Firstly, the blog was intended as a means of sharing learning with families and to further develop the sense of community between home and school.

The second aim of this blog was to give the children a sense of audience due to the fact that we were targeting writing school wide and looking for ways to improve student standard and motivation to write. The latter has grown far more than I had initially planned thanks to the use of a PLN group who offer comments and motivation to write. This group comprises of teachers and students from around the country/world.

The “Scooper” derivation came from “what’s the scoop?” in other words “what’s the news?” Over the year, operation of the blog has evolved. Initially, it was set up and managed by myself, the teacher. Over the first term, the blog presented itself as a fantastic means of shared reading and writing supporting the modeling of safe internet practice and good, old fashioned pedagogy and the writing cycle. As the year has progressed, the children have stepped up and slowly taken over the running of the blog. “Today’s Scoopers” were rostered and they would work through the writing cycle to plan, draft, edit and conference their posts. Once posts were published with the approval of the rest of the class and myself in the form of conferences. Often feedback will come from families,friends and “followers” without being illicited. The children will read their feedback and respond or edit their posts depending on the feedback they receive. There is definitely a sense of pride in this group of writers when they receive feedback and see  readers from around the world visiting their blog.

The Outcomes of this Blog has directly impacted on my classroom practice and outcomes in the children’s writing. Blogging as a class has lead to connecting with a range of audiences and developing projects with classes worldwide.However, the development of using blogs in this classroom really came from a schoolwide initiative with regards to the development of our writing programmes that would lead to improved achievement at all levels. Obviously aspects of development included pedagogy and practice. Blogs and web 2 tools have been only a part of this project but it is fair to say that they have accentuated motivation to write, purpose to publish our writing and engagement in the whole writing cycle.

Children will actively seek reasons to write either collaboratively or on their own and will independently respond to feedback left in the comments in order to revisit and edit their writing. It was noted at our most recent three-way conferences that Writing was voluntarily shared as a favourite area of learning and (surprisingly) not one boy failed to mention that writing was one of his favourite subjects. By using digital tools ranging from the class camera to web based tools for publishing, this class has been inspired because they’re reaching an audience and their published pieces look “real”. Above all, they are getting feedback and responses from a real audience. This means that their writing is real!