Students will be blogging their descriptive writing pieces on this blog -- MrGoerend.com -- which was created and is moderated by me. All comments to the writers and posts by the writers are moderated by me before they show up on the blog. We have discussed in class the safety and privacy issues surrounding a project like this. Students know they will sign their blog posts and comments with their first and last initials only. If you have any questions, please talk to your 6th grader about our classroom blogging discussions, and feel free to contact me. We hope that you -- parents -- will participate in our blogging experience as well, not just by reading, but also commenting on our students' writings to share in this positive experience for our students.
Students need to be writing for the authentic audiences they will experience for the rest of their lives. We live in a world that is getting smaller -- in a good way. As you can see in the visitors map on our blog, we have people from all around the world visiting our blog. This "small world" is something we as educators need to embrace. A recent article in Wired magazine has this to say about the freshman class at Stanford University:
The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.
from: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson
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