The Georgia Educational Technology Conference held in November of 2004 was extremely helpful to me. I had not attended in three years and was beginning to feel left behind technologically speaking. I needed upgrading, badly!

In October I began to pour over the advanced information and schedule. I saw many sessions that I wanted to attend. Oh dear, some to them were at the same time. It was too late to be cloned. Decisions, Decisions!

The sessions for media specialist were great. Sometimes you can learn as much from the talk before and after the sessions as you do during the sessions. We all have the same experiences and frustrations. It is great to be able to bounce ideas off the like-minded.

Friday morning came. I had been sitting for two days listening to some excellent presentations but I was tired. I resisted the temptation to sleep in and skip the first session. I am so glad that I did resist because it was there that I got an idea that has inspired my reluctant readers.

I had heard of blogging but didn’t know anything about it. So I decided to attend the Blognology 101 session. I heard Jeff Giddens and Aleph Fore discussing the use of the Blogger web site. They did a superb job of explaining the in's and out's of the web site. They told of the uses of blogs. They even explained how blogs had been used during the recent presidential election. They told how bloggers have used this medium to get the opinion out to other bloggers and thus persuaded others to their way of thinking.

At first I was not too impressed but then I began to think about how I could use it with my sixth and seventh graders who were tiring of Accelerated Reader. Could blogging be the answer to energizing these students and give them a boost in their wanted to read? It was worth a try.

I began by creating a blog for each grade level at www.blogger.com. It is a very user friendly web site and blogs can be created in a matter of minutes, just as the presenters said. I wrote a welcoming blog for each site telling about myself and the kinds of books I like to read.

As the students came in to check out A.R. books I showed them my blog. I explained that I don’t always have time to talk to them individually about books that they like and how they are doing reaching their A.R. goals. So I invited them to post blogs on my web site telling me about the books that they were reading and suggesting books that they would like me to order. “This would be really a great help to me as I begin to place my orders for the spring,” I said. A little psychology doesn’t hurt.

The idea has caught on. The students are enjoying coming to the media center to blog. The rule was set in place that the student must take an A.R. quiz before they can blog.

I made posters reminding them to blog. I placed these outside the language arts teacher’s classrooms. I also remind them to blog to me when they come into the media center.

Students began to encourage others to blog to me and some have even set up their own blog so that they may blog back and forth to each other. I am encouraging teachers to create their own blog so that they may communicate with their students on line.

It is ideas like blogging that make the Georgia Educational Technology Conference so worthwhile. It allows we who work in rural sections of the state to become acquainted with what is new and gives us inspiration as to how we can use the new technology to help our students move on toward their highest potential.

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