This week our service learning blog work has centered around how to build an audience and reflecting on the service students have completed so far. We spent a class period reading and reflecting on how we could use the ideas Larry Ferlazzo discussed in his article “Eight Ways to Build an Audience for Your Blog.”
Here were some of my students’ thoughts on the subject…
Twitter is a good way to gain support and followers world-wide. I plan to also ask teachers and other students to share my blog on their pages. -Tecia
I have already put my blog on Facebook and I will continue to do the same on other social media such as Twitter and via email. -Ayeshah
From the article, I realized how serious topics are to people and bloggers need to make sure their information is reliable and reasonable to their blogs. -Caroline
The blogging process that we went over in class has helped me improve my blog to attract more audience to view my page by adding more information every week so that there is a fresh mind and information for my followers to look at.-Timmy
A couple of students reviewed another of Larry Ferlazzo’s articles, “The Best Sources of Advice for Teachers (and Others!) On How to be Better Bloggers.” Heather said she felt “Warning: Do You Recognize these 21 Blogging Mistakes?” would be a good article for our class to review together to make further improvements to our blogs currently in progress.
This week we’re going to read and discuss Stephanie Buck’s “12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media” in an effort to improve students’ digital footprints.
In the area of community service, some students are off and running with time spent and efforts made while others still have a great deal of work to do. Here are some of their thoughts on the subject…
I have 6 hours and 40 minutes of service learning. I have been serving with the Early College High School recycling club. I gather up all the bags from all the recycling bins from all over the school every Thursday and then take them to the recycling center. -Tyler
October 12th, I plan to get my 1st few credited hours of community service after school. -Justin
So far i have spent every Thursday after school going to the Recycling Team from 2:30-3:30. Last week, we just completed our first activity in the community by cleaning up the campus; picking up mostly cigarette buds and recycling bottles and cans. I did a little research around the campus by asking the average smoker how many cigarettes they smoke in a day, because we found more cigarettes than trash on the campus. I found that an average smoker uses up two and a half pack of cigarettes a day. This is very dangerous to the environment because cigarettes are non biodegrade-able. Maybe its best that people create a solution to recycle cigarettes also, not just plastic and metal. -Timmy
We’ll keep working… Check out the progress on the blogs here, and let us know what you think…
Mrs. Atkinson English Teacher 