I attended two conferences: I Like Delicious Things: An Introduction to Tagging and Folksonomies (Chris Betcher) as well as We Like Our Blogging Buddies: The Write Stuff with Blogging Mentors (Kathy Cassidy and Patrick Lewis).
The discussion of tagging and folksonomies was useful to me in that it provided clarification for me about how tagging works. I liked the description of the tagging being a bottom-up process and not driven by some expert in the ether. Wordle was fun to experiment with and could have a number of applications.
I was more intrigued with using blogs with younger children and writing mentors. In this experiment, first and second graders were paired with pre-service teachers as blogging buddies. The pre-service teachers responded to all of the blog posts made by their buddies, offering positive feedback and some tips on writing such as capitalizing names and the first word of sentences as well as punctuation, etc.
Some of our fifth and sixth grade classes have a buddy set-up with kindergarten and first graders. Being a blogging buddy might be a natural extension of this arrangement, although I think it would work better with 2nd and 3rd graders given the dyslexic nature of our student population. Using a blog or a wiki for our older students’ summer reading might also intrigue the students into writing/reading more.
I really like the idea of blogging buddies. This krelationship is a win-win situation for the kids and using technology can help extend the connection to beyond the times the students can be together in school.
I guess the conference on tagging was a success…this post has many tags!
I’m excited about trying the blog buddies. And I like your avatar. . .