Blogging in the classroom

Blogs in the classroom

Two years ago I was approached by my school’s technology resource teacher (TRT) to pilot blogging with students in the middle school. I was very excited, as I follow a few bloggers and was always thinking of ways to utilize them in the classroom. Due to the age of my students I was unsure whether this would be a good idea or not. My TRT and I reviewed several blogging sites before settling on KidBlogs.org. This site we mainly choose due to being able to screen each students post before it was posted for the whole class to see as well as the privacy features.


The first assignment had to do with the students posting as a famous person that they had researched that was involved in some way with dispelling intolerance. This particular assignment worked on point of view and went better than expected. Students very quickly realized that I would not approve their post to be published on the blog if there were any errors. I found that even my students who hated to write, were now taking the time to do a better job because they wanted their classmates to read and comment on their post.

Since this piloting lesson I have done other lessons, although not with last year’s students as there were too many students without computer access from home. This year I am trying to think of new and creative ways to use blogging in the classroom since the majority of my students this year have access to computers at home.

I think that I may replace the study guides that I do with novels with blogging topics. For example, if the particular chapters are going to be dealing with characterization, I may create several topics about this and have the students respond via the blog. In this manner I hope to get more thoughtful responses as well as all students responding as students who are normally afraid to speak out in class due to shyness or worry about being wrong, could post their ideas on the blog without having to worry about the fear of speaking out in front of their peers, something very common in middle school.