Urban problems in suburban schools. Can AIS help?

Wow! I just read a great post at Practical Theory . It has nothing to do with blogging in the classroom, but it ignited my fire today. Carol's is one of my favorite blogs to visit because she is truly an administrator who is involved everyday with students. Carol is discussing the real problem of kids who just aren't in a mental place where they can learn in a traditional setting. This post hit close to home even though Hilton is not an urban school . We may be the quintessential suburban district, but we have those students whose home life is unimaginable for most of us. I think we try and reach these students in a number of ways. AIS is one of the tools we have. In AIS we tend to see the kids who are struggling in other places in their lives.
What we do in AIS is so different than what happens in most any other area of the HS. It's not that we are better at reaching kids, it's just that we have the luxury of being able to meet them one on one where they are at any given moment. We can use that every day to find a way to reach a student and help them learn the core content we are responsible for. We call it the social emotional piece of AIS. That's the real secret to our success.
Unfortunately, the very thing that makes us special also sets us up as an easy target. We see less students during the day than most other teachers. This is often perceived as unfair. Though I think if you asked a classroom teacher if they would want to spend every class with a group of angry, mostly undermotivated, reluctant learners they would say no. Our FTE's are constantly on the chopping block because people who have no experience with our program think it can be replicated by a classroom teacher in a study hall setting. This may be true for the academic support we give, but we are so much more. I admit I am overly invested in what we do. I was part of the team that designed AIS in the HS and I believe in it's effectiveness. It infuriates me when people think that all we should do is teach study skills and help with homework. Hilton has the 1% that is talked about in the article. We need to keep in place any tools we have which allow us to reach them.

What's so Powerful about Blogging?

I don't think I am really getting the power of blogging...can anyone help? Certainly interaction among students is powerful for learning, but how does the teacher use this to reinforce a lesson? I'm not quite making the leap here. Kathy S talks about an English class writing a critical lens essay and how she thinks blogging could help the process. What would a successful outcome look like?
Are we as educators happy with good process or do we need to be able to assess its effectiveness? As I am exploring ways to bring blogging into our classroom I continually hit the mental roadblock that asks "How can I determine if this has been successful?". The more I read other blogs the more I think I'm missing some key idea.
At Super Cool Science Brian talks about being very excited to blog casually with his students about science related topics. This use of blogging makes more sense to me, but I see it as entertaining and welcoming, not as a true instructional tool.
So... since everyone else seems to "get" this and I don't, please send me your thoughts. I want to be as excited about blogging in the classroom as everyone else.

How do I know what blogs to read?

Wow! There is so much out there in cyberspace. It's really difficult to sort through and separate the good from the bad. If our students can do that why can't they find the main idea in a paragraph??

I stumbled across a few blogs and links that intrigued me. If you want to be freaked out about internet conspiracy theories check out Big Brother Google is Tracking You. This was a blog article posted at a really good site called Moving at the Speed of Creativity. I liked the author's casual style and I liked the mix of topics addressed.

For something a little more practical try the Online Tools for Classroom Use site. This site had a great list of links for free online ed tech tools you can use in the classroom. There are useful links for every grade level.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of junk out there too. Many of the blog sites I checked out seemed to be written by self absorbed lonely people. Reminds me of the uncle at the family reunion who everyone avoids because all he can do is talk about himself and his opinions.

I'm already learning to be more discriminating in giving a site my time. I think there's a lesson I could use with students developing here, just not sure what it is.

Welcome to my Figments blog

Hi! Welcome to my blog. I created this blog to talk about technology in education with my online class. I chose Figments as the theme because this blog is a place to think out loud. No scholarly treatise here. Let's chat about what's new in technology, what you're doing in class and how it's working.