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.
5th Grade Social Studies
9 years ago
I like the idea of starting with something simple like you did. Can you provide a link to something you have completed with the students so that I can see how the web site works. I plan on using the site next month for book projects.
ReplyDeleteWhen updating my class site on Weebly, I noticed they offered free blog pages as well. I know some of my students have used Weebly to create web pages for class projects in the past, so that may be another possibility.
I like the task, too. Study guide questions can be so dry, but im guesing you can recast them for blogging.
ReplyDeleteThis is a topic that hou might consider for the lit review paper-- transforming routine writing tasks into blogging assignments.
Worth thinking about.
Replacing stud guides with blogs is a different approach. It gets the students involved in the work, and allows them to practice writing skills. I believe that writing has become something that students tend to become lax in simply because of texting, and other short hand writing that we use. I also like the idea that it allows the "shy" student to share and communicate without having to speak in public. Great idea! I may try to tweak it and use it in my math classes soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the great suggestions. Ron-I can't post anything of my students via the blog due to privacy restrictions but I will post the prompts I have used.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you commented that your students write better because they know you will be checking for proper grammar and spelling. I think this would absolutely help the students writing because in order to get their work posted, it needs to be correct!
ReplyDeleteAmanda