Join us, as we talk about elementary student blogging with our guest Jan Smith, a sixth grade teachers in British Columbia, Huzzah! http://huzzah.edublogs.org/  She started with a strictly controled class blog, but found that it lacked conversational give and take.  She started again with an edublogs account, and this time she encouraged a more "conversational" approach both in student's writing, giving them a voice, and how they interacted with each other.  She started a practice of "gradual release" giving students more authority, and control over their blogging and blogs as they showed responsibility until many had earned their own blogs and were self-moderated.  She also shared how she dealt with problems and conflicts when they came up, respecting students, and making them responsible. 

Link to Text Chat.

We talked about various projects we are doing with our students. Some are in classes during the school day, and some are outside of school hours.  We're building connections with our peers, both far away and in our schools and districts. We're filling in our network, and making some rich and surprising connections   Link to text chat