Blogging in the classroom has many uses. First and foremost, it enhances students' writing ability. Teachers should take any opportunity they get to have students writing, especially if it is something they see as new and fun. Blogs also get students to use crititcal thinking skills due to the interactive nature of blogs. They must read a post and think about it before responding.
Blogs in my classroom:
I am a business teacher in a small school, which means I must wear many hats. I teach 4th thru 12th grade with subjects ranging from basic keyboarding to computer applications to accounting. My favorite classes to use blogging are my more creative classes called Desktop Publishing and Digital Photography, which are high school courses. Primarily, I use blogging to post assignments and have student create online portfolios. This gives them an opportunity to showcase their work and makes it easier for me to grade their assignments.
What I really like about the blog is that students can see examples of the work they are expected to complete. Having a blog also came in handy while I was out for paternity leave so the students were able to keep up on their work since I continued posting assignments from home.
Overall I feel that blogs enhance student learning because it exposes them to additional technology while providing a medium for them to showcase their work. Students are also able to collaborate with each other to improve the final quality of their assignments.
Examples:
Below are examples of my blogs if you would like to see examples of blogs in the classroom:
-Desktop Publishing
-Desktop Publsihing Student Blog
-Digital Photography (This blog is a work in progress)
Excellent post! I really like how you include models of exemplars on your blog. The students can easily access an example of what their work should look like. They don't have to constantly ask "Is this good enough?" Also, I like the fact that it makes grading assignments easier. You don't have to deal with lost papers and taking stacks of papers home to grade. It seems much more efficient to pull the assignments from the student's blog. I have a couple questions for you.
ReplyDelete1) Do all of your students have internet access at home? If not, how do you overcome this problem.
2) How exactly do the students go about creating their own blogs. Do you step them through this process and have all the students use the same site, such as blogger? Once they have their blog, do you simply add the student's feed to your aggregator so you can see when they submit assignments.
3) Lastly, is your school district open minded with the idea of blogging? I can see my district being a bit skeptical as there are some student safety issues to deal with.
Thanks for the post!
- Ken
Ken,
ReplyDeleteAbout 75% of my students have Internet at home. This really isn't an issue for me however since I teach in a computer lab, so they have constant access to the Internet and my blog, as well as their own.
For the students to create their blogs, they all must use Blogger. I do this for two reasons: 1. It is very user friendly and 2. It keeps everything uniform for instructional purposes. Student's have the opportunity to personalize their blogs with templates, but they have to do this on their own time and also figure it out on their own. It's also easy for all of the students to create Blogger accounts because they have school assigned emails. They are not allowed to create a Gmail account for this however, since the school needs to manage the mail accounts. Once the blogs are created, each student emails me a link to their blog and I then subscribe to it. I also take that link and add it to my link list, as you can see in my Desktop Publishing class.
As for my school district, they are very open minded about technology in general. Being in a small school, we are really in a good situation in which we don't have an official technology coordinator. Our IT person is also the Science teacher, and since he is overloaded, I am the next in line. So if there is ever a site that we come across that has educational value that the automatic filter might be blocking, we just unblock it. Our administrators encourage new technology including social bookmarking and blogging. In fact, they even have inservices for teachers showing us how to incorporate more technology into the classroom. From the stories I hear from other teachers and their limitations, I feel really blessed to be able to do the things I can.
To help you address the concerns of the administration, if you look in our book, there is an excellent sample letter to send home to parents to let them know they will be blogging. It is always a good idea to never use a full name and also have them limit the comments that can be posted on their blog. If it was really an issue, you could always have your IT person host your own blogging service on the school network. Something such as Wordpress is easy enough to install. My Digital Photography blog is an example of that.
Very impressed Brett. You are much further along with all of this than I am!
ReplyDeleteWhat I really liked about your post was what you described about when you were at paternal leave. It just occured to me that since I am a substitute, often times I come across students who have concerns when their regular teacher is absent. Only if they used blogs they could update their students where ever and whenever. Any way how do you manage to go through so many blogs since it is not that easy to go through so many blogs that you subscribe to, isnt it easier that students just subscribe to your blog and is it possible for you to create an area where they will submit their work. I mean doesn't it make it easier instead to have one portal for everyone's work rather than you having to visit each blog?
ReplyDeleteNoreen,
ReplyDeleteI actually think it would be more work for me if they all posted on my blog. My blog would get cluttered with comments and images, plus then I'd have to go through and scroll through my posts. With a blog aggregator such as Google Reader, I am able to view all of my student's posts at once, without actually having to go to each of their individual blogs.
To put things into perspective here is an example. I am really passionate about photography, I also have my own photography business. I enjoy reading photography blogs online and actually subscribe to 76 of them. If you think about it, it would take at least an hour just to skim them all for decent content by visiting each page, with some of them maybe not even posting anything new. With Google Reader, I am able to get all of the new posts right in one spot and can sift through all of them in less than 10 minutes, starring the ones I want to read later.