Beyond School

Tuna’s Aquarium via kwout

Christina Kang is a senior in my AP Literature class, a leader of Project Global Cooling, a Flixn star of a summer post (see her discuss a David Sedaris short story in a video embed here), and one wonderfully creative and natural student blogger.

I want to introduce her blog to anybody who enjoys reading sharp, creative, pleasant young writers. Christina started “Tuna’s Aquarium” as part of the “Visionary Student Blogging” AP Literature project in October/November, and in the three months since then has climbed to my list of favorites.

The email I just sent to my colleagues at my school gives an idea of why she’s worth showing, in my view, as a model of authentic (”unschooly”) classroom blogging:

Senior Christina Kang’s blog is four-months old and comfy as your favorite childhood treehouse.

Check out what she does:

• links to blogs she reads out of shared interest (medicine, art and design, computer graphics, more) – which will surely lead to a personal network and relationships with many of these people
• posts her own artwork as illustrations for her posts
• shows she’s ‘cultured’ by writing about literature she’s reading (not for school, thank god)
• posts original film-making experiments she’s created
• posts podcasts of original songs she’s recorded with her classmate on Garageband (she sings backup)
• posts radio-show type podcasts
• writes wonderfully well – strong voice, relaxed, smart, witty, natural
• shows a good sense of visual design in choice of blog theme

If your students (or you!) need a good model of multimedia blogging, it doesn’t get any better.  You should subscribe to Christina’s blog – you’ll love getting updates of her new content.

I’ll be sharing more exemplary student work in the coming weeks. As Konrad Glogowski also knows, it takes time to help students “grow” a blog.  After four months, some of my student blogs are ready for the harvest.

1. Creating Critical Readers: A Too-Easy Diigo-Google News-Student Blogging Project
2. My Wikispaces in Education Webinar Presentation Video is Up
3. How Radio News-Writing and -Announcing Make for Ideal, Literacy-Focused Performance Assessment

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