IdeaBox was in a little basket on my doorstep a while back. A quick way to add commenting to any page, I finally put it to good use.
Yesterday, I nervously printed out copies of “How Do You Know?” for my juniors. It felt like a conceited lesson plan, but for students to see their teachers writing is important and it often means a lot that a teacher is willing to put ideas out there for students to read.
It’s awkward to talk about “the author” when “the author” is you, so I moved the discussion online today by adding IdeaBox to a copy of “How Do You Know?” that I threw onto the school server. This allowed students a place to comment on what I had written and didn’t make me uncomfortable.
It also serves as the beginning of our discussion of what makes for a useful comment in preparation for when they start commenting on each other’s blogs. So we don’t run the risk of public shame, I replaced everyone’s name with a number and we’ll refer to comments by number on Thursday in a discussion of how effective each comment is.