Interactive Chatting Teddies via edublogs a brilliant blog/communication idea that really extends the travelling soft toy idea to include video conferencing and blogging.

I tried to start something like this except with an otter of course. But we always seem to forget the otter. Even though blogging is at the front of my mind there seems to be countless occasions when a child say to me: ‘we should have taken a photo of that for the blog.’ just too late. I would guess with younger children you could really develop the idea that your furry friend just had to go everywhere with the class, and he/she could carry the camera.

When we started blogging we hardly ever used photos on the blog, now we hardly have a post without an image. This makes the process a lot more interesting for the children.

Yesterday I was blogging with one of our primary fours, about a recent visit to the sports centre. No pictures, but one of the children came up with the goods suggesting a photo we could take in the class and use.

I’ve been doing a lot more whole class blogging this session. I know some folk would not consider this authentic blogging, but I think it is quite a useful way to carry out a lesson. It is really shared writing which is what we spend a fair bit of time doing in primary classrooms, the children suggest and refine their text, lots of discussion, group thinking etc. the same thing as we do countless times on big bits of paper or the blackboard. Class blogging covers all the same ground and it add a real purpose, the possibility of a conversation and keeps a record. My typing is also a lot clearer than my handwriting and catching typos on the whiteboard keeps the children on their toes. This sort of lesson can also be a useful way to review and record new learning. Finally it is a lot easier than getting a whole class to blog if you only have two computers in the room.

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