"When Teddy Bears Go Blogging"....

... unintended audiences applaud.

Lucky kids, these second graders.  Their teachers invite djembe drummers into the classroom.  Let them get wet messing around with water wheels.  Devote hours of instructional time building Ms. Frizzle-style panoramas of Bat Caves and the Great Barrier Reef.  Organize storyteller visits.  Take them to puppet shows.  Muck around with K'Nex in class.  Drip maple syrup onto the carpet.  Wear pajamas to school.

Of course we're lucky too, that these energetic and inspired teachers put up a blog so we all can see what they've done, and learn from and be inspired by it.  Surely the kids' families and friends also enjoyed seeing the pictures on line.  Technology allows Ms. Sherry and Ms. Sawyer to document and disseminate the fabulous activities they've done with their classes, easily, quickly, and cheaply.  Which is terrific!

But it's the Doing, rather than the Documenting and Disseminating, that is the primary instructional point.  

The idea warrants underscoring.  It is easily lost.  It illustrates the point that Sara Dexter made in her eTips article, that educational technology does not possess inherent instructional value.  These kids' teachers gave them the time, material, and freedom to make a mess, to bang loudly, to go outdoors, to conduct their own experiments.  That is what makes these students fortunate.  That is how their imaginations were captured and their spirits sent to soar.  That is what supported what Dexter calls the "learning outcomes."  That the activities were attractively blogged is an extra bonus, a bonus whose value accrues principally to us, a largely unintended audience.

Certainly, kids do benefit from making a record of their activities, and referring back to it, and thereby reinforcing their learning.  And the blog effects that consolidation beautifully; that is the piece that is, in Dexter's terms, the "value added."  However, had the kids put together an old-fashioned lap book with pasted-in snapshots, that too would have done the job (albeit more expensively, and less portably, and with far less audience reach).  We, the anonymous Internet public, are actually the principal beneficiaries of the blog.  The kids benefit from...

Good teaching.

Always worth remembering, that.