Not Much French
If you have checked out my French class blog, you will notice a few things. First you will notice that there isn’t much French on it. There are lots of crazy posts about baseball, MySpace, recycling and other stuff that 8th graders care about. School purists may say, “That isn’t learning French.” And they would be correct. It is community building. One goal of mine in introducing a class blog was to build a class community. My class is small, only 8 students, but they each are unique and have interests and lives outside of first period French.
In my PLP group, I have gotten to experience how community building can increase learning and collaboration. We did a few “digital field trips” that allowed us to learn some new tools, but mostly to learn about each other. The first project was a photo a day for the month of October. Were we talking only about pedagogy and our students, and our teaching philosophies? Not even close. We were commenting on photos of our kids, the barn near our house, changing leaves, and jack-0-lanterns. But those seemingly unimportant conversations made it so we had no trouble commenting on the “serious” things on the PLP Ning.
So, when you look at my class blog, and notice that even I posted a video of the Muppets, know that we are building relationships. Once those online relationships are built and the comfort level is there with using WordPress, you will see some amazing French happening at Le Café Français.
