Reflection posted on 29th Novemeber 2007

First of all my students were required to suggest a name for their newsletter. They were all very excited in this whole activity. Almost everybody suggested a name and not only mere name it was but a whole lot of logic behind their thought for example one guy came up with Rising Sun for which he said as this is the first time for us so this newsletter is just like a first ray of light for us. Some body suggested Rising star , Baby bloomers etc etc. But eventually every body got settled over the name of Creative Gazette. According to my students it is unique and is representing the true meaning of the newsletter.

The second step was to form a committee. Which included Editors, Sub editors, Proof readers, Reporters (typists), technical staff, Hawkers and miscellaneous. They were so excited to take up the responsibility that they literally fought over who will be what. Not only that they even made up their own jobs' specifications regarding the responsibilities held by different title holders of the news letter.

Hawkers were being scheduled the very next day to promote their newsletter and to make a request and announcements in the whole school to encourage the students to write and contribute in their newsletter. Posters and special class presentations were being made and it actually provoked other students' interest in the whole activity. Dead lines were set by the committee for submission of the work .

Mean while the submitted work was being collected and proofread by the concerned students. Once proofread the whole work was being submitted to the typist and then eventually to the technical personnel who were directly responsible for publishing the work on the internet. The problem of connectivity was there but students were enthususiastic enough to continue this work at homes and this way our work was done quite smoothly. Once an incident occured and their whole newsletter was gone. Somebody from them must have shared their password and login id with an outsider and due to this reason the whole project was simply vanished. The blog was there but nothing else, every single post was removed but my students re-posted everything as we had a back up of each and every submitted document . Of course they changed their password after this incident. I was wondereing that is there any way that these sort of things should be avoided?

I noticed in the previous class that some of my students are not paying attention because they were not having proper basic information regarding the softwares they will be using during the making of their newsletter specially Ms. Word and the main reason for that was the negligence portray by themselves in the previous classes. But I again took these handful of kids in my and theirs extra timings and briefed them about the softwares that we will use during the making of our e-newsletter.

Surprisingly they remembered mostly every thing and wow what a fun they had. I mean in the first classes when they were given full permission of publishing each and every thing. Most of them even chat about their own activities and friends on net and the sites they browse, even were providing the links in their blog.

Still I feel that teachers should also visit this site and post their comments and all. Lets see I will talk to them and ask for their response.

My Reflection on the first day of introducing the blog

The first time when I planned to introduce the idea of blog to my class. I was really worried that they will be able to do it or not. Surprisingly, though the idea was new to them but they got very excited and some of them were so anxious to get themselves publish on the net that they made a blog in the same class. To attract the girls I told them that they even can talk and gossip on blogs. They agreed to give it a try. Surprisingly, I noticed that because I took it for granted that they all know how to use atleast Ms-word ,came up with the problem of not even knowing the basics. I got worried that why is it so . Because last year only we have covered this topic. This was very frustrating. The reason for this ignorance was that they never bothered what ever is being taught to them because they think that they have to learn only when they are rewarded with marks. In this condition only those students take interest who are actually interested in computers.
I hope working on blogs will takes up their interest and will motivate them to learn and explore more.