I chose to view “We Like Our Blogging Buddies: The Write Stuff with Blogging Mentors“  by Kathy Cassidy and Patrick Lewis. It was absolutely fabulous! This conference was about pairing pre-service teachers with emergent writers through blogging. Basically, the college students are required to blog with their “buddy” and give positive, supportive feedback on the individual’s writing. Through blogging, the instructional process seemed natural, fun, and very exciting for the children. What a rich way for the young learner and the college student to gain valuable insight on emergent writing skills. It truly seemed to be a win-win situation. The college student got the opportunity to witness the developmental stages of pre-writing and writing skills and learned how to decipher invented spelling, while the pre-writer/writer gained a mentor he not only looked up to, but looked forward to writing to. Hats off to the college professor and the primary teacher who paired up for this project. I did learn something new! Web 2.0 can be successfully incorporated into an early elementary classroom. I have seen a lot of sites where K-1 classrooms have a blog, but it looks like the teacher has done a good bit of the work. This session showed me that it is possible to do amazing things in the classroom with Web 2.0 that will facilitate authentic learning experiences.

In closing, I have found this online professional development opportunity to be quite valuable. I do look forward to exploring further and sharing this wonderful site with my friends who currently teach!