Library, Marblehead Village School, 1 hour

The observation on 3/14/13 once again gave me a close up look at the LMS working with her 6^th grade “Books and Blogs” EDU students.  Now that the blogs were set up, it was time to provide content to this collaborative student endeavor.  This first posting was and informative and welcoming post.  While Mrs. Soghomonian passed back their planning sheets with log on information, the groups discussed what changes they should make as their focus.  While last week Oscar Pistorius was a “hot” 1^st topic for one group’s blog, Pope Francis I was this week’s newest focus.

The groups got right to work.  They logged on their blogs and picked up where they left off.  Right away the aesthetics became a focus of concern.  One group was typing everything in caps and after a question asking them if they thought it would be overwhelming or interpreted as shouting, they decided to forgo all caps so that they could “bold” or use caps for the really important words and phrases that they wanted to make the reader more aware of.  

Next to create a question was that they were limited in their creative text expression.  The girls were used to having numerous fonts and sizes to choose from and in EduBlogs there is only one size and one font.  After looking at many tabs to no avail, the girls expressed disappointment in this revelation but continued on with their post.  

Another issue was the perceived spacing differences between letters in a word.  The word “welcome” looked on the screen as if there was a space between the “c” and the “o.”  I agreed that it did look that way but suggested that they continue on with their typing and they could check in preview later to see if the space really existed in the final product.  As I suspected, the preview showed the word with no odd spacing.  These are just some of the idiosyncrasies that they were now used to with EduBlogs.  The girls, liking their first post, published it!

Now they focused on their newest “hot” news item….Pope Francis I.  With Mrs. Soghomonian’s encouragement, they realized that before they created a post about him, they needed to learn more about the newest Pope.  Mrs. Soghomonian also reminded the girls that they should not copy and paste information they should instead be finding information and providing their unique twist that they promised in their blog introduction.  While these posts were to be based on other sources, Mrs. Soghomonian also reminded the girls that they needed to give credit to their sources.  After a quick Google search, the girls focused on Fox News stating, “That’s a reliable source.”

Pope Francis Celebrating 1st Mass by Fox News

 As they read the above article and others provided by Fox News, questions arose from unknown words as “homily, parishioners, and apostle” to the relevance of people such as St. Francis of Assisi.  This led to their biggest revelation when I asked them what the Pope’s real birth name was as an important piece of information to include.  They immediately stated, “Isn’t it Francis?”  That led to a discussion about how each pope picks his name and there is significance in the name each chooses.  The following was reported on Fox News in an article titled "For Latin America's first pope, fond tales of humility, tense questions over role during junta" the news site reported, 

“In taking the name Francis, he drew connections to the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi, who saw his calling as trying to rebuild the simple spirit of the church and devote his life to missionary journeys. It also evokes references to Francis Xavier, one of the 16th century founders of the Jesuit order that is known for its scholarship and outreach.” 

Francis Xavier by 鹿両性証明

Saint Francis of Assisi by Bonaventura Berlinghieri

You really could see their minds working with all the questions that were being asked.  Each path led them to a new question.  They were so zealous to find out more that they were not happy to see their EDU time over.  As the girls handed back their information sheets, they quickly shared some new information with Mrs. Soghomonian, who smiled and praised the girls for their discoveries.  I found that while I witnessed their search for knowledge, I learned a few things about Pope Francis as well.