Saturday, September 25, 2004
Internship Blogging
Author: June Dodge
Summary: Each semester, juniors at the high school become interns to various businesses. One of the standing assignments is to keep a journal of experiences during the internship. The internship coordinator has mentioned several times that each term there are students who do a wonderful job, get rave reviews by their mentors, get offered jobs and other opportunities... however. every cycle some of these same students do not receive passing credit for the internship--simply because they have not kept the journal. This project attempts to use a blog based system to encourage students to complete the assignment, to make it easier for teachers to follow-up on student work, and to make it more difficult for students to slip thru the cracks.
Context: All students and teachers at the high school have access to computers, and the internet. This project would be set up for one of the supervising teachers to have easy access to student journals. It would also enable the internship coordinator to have access and to make comments.
Duration: One semester.
Goals: There would be no student who would not receive credit simply because they had not completed the journal requirement. The system would make it easy for the supervising teachers and the internship coordinator to monitor student experiences in their internship. More feedback would be given. Also, the other students would have a way to check to see how the internship of others are proceeding.
Participants: Supervising teachers, actually 11th content area teachers who are (randomly) assigned this task. Their task in this system would be to check the student blogs. Either using email, comments or face-to-face the teacher would remind students that they need to make their entries. The internship coordinator would use the system to post information for supervising teachers as well as students.
Process: What needs to happen before participants begin to interact with your system? What will you do first, second, third... etc. to make it happen.
Resources: What readings, web sites, other sources of information will you need to line up for this project to work?
Policies: The school already has an Acceptable Use Policy. This particular project would be designed so students would keep on topic,
Products: What will result from your system? What products or other outcomes?
Evaluation: How will you know that this was effective? How will you evaluate learning and other outcomes?
Summary: Each semester, juniors at the high school become interns to various businesses. One of the standing assignments is to keep a journal of experiences during the internship. The internship coordinator has mentioned several times that each term there are students who do a wonderful job, get rave reviews by their mentors, get offered jobs and other opportunities... however. every cycle some of these same students do not receive passing credit for the internship--simply because they have not kept the journal. This project attempts to use a blog based system to encourage students to complete the assignment, to make it easier for teachers to follow-up on student work, and to make it more difficult for students to slip thru the cracks.
Context: All students and teachers at the high school have access to computers, and the internet. This project would be set up for one of the supervising teachers to have easy access to student journals. It would also enable the internship coordinator to have access and to make comments.
Duration: One semester.
Goals: There would be no student who would not receive credit simply because they had not completed the journal requirement. The system would make it easy for the supervising teachers and the internship coordinator to monitor student experiences in their internship. More feedback would be given. Also, the other students would have a way to check to see how the internship of others are proceeding.
Participants: Supervising teachers, actually 11th content area teachers who are (randomly) assigned this task. Their task in this system would be to check the student blogs. Either using email, comments or face-to-face the teacher would remind students that they need to make their entries. The internship coordinator would use the system to post information for supervising teachers as well as students.
Process: What needs to happen before participants begin to interact with your system? What will you do first, second, third... etc. to make it happen.
Resources: What readings, web sites, other sources of information will you need to line up for this project to work?
Policies: The school already has an Acceptable Use Policy. This particular project would be designed so students would keep on topic,
Products: What will result from your system? What products or other outcomes?
Evaluation: How will you know that this was effective? How will you evaluate learning and other outcomes?
// posted by June D @ 11:53 AM 
Comments:
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June,
I think you've got a great idea here, especially from a teacher standpoint. I remember journal collection days. Ugggh. Keeping track of tens of journals is not a fun chore. Blogging eliminates the bulky box of journals, the flipping of pages to see what's new, the scrawly handwriting...By using blogs, the teacher can set up feeds and see when students are writing, and easily monitor their work. Much better!
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your plan as it gets developed.
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I think you've got a great idea here, especially from a teacher standpoint. I remember journal collection days. Ugggh. Keeping track of tens of journals is not a fun chore. Blogging eliminates the bulky box of journals, the flipping of pages to see what's new, the scrawly handwriting...By using blogs, the teacher can set up feeds and see when students are writing, and easily monitor their work. Much better!
I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your plan as it gets developed.
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