As blogging and social media become more and more mainstream, teachers across the country continue to make decisions about which particular aspects of social media they may want to embrace and include in their curriculum. Many classrooms in Connecticut are already using blogs to help keep students and parents abreast of upcoming projects and assignments. But can blogs also serve as a platform for the students themselves?
Richardson's text does a nice job of outlining the various purposes of integrating blogs into a school environment, but in my mind the most compelling reason for me to consider asking my students to post and comment on blogs is the collaborative spaces that these blogs become. I've been blogging for several years now, and I currently maintain a book review blog. I have experienced firsthand the sense of community that comes from sharing your writing and receiving thoughtful responses to your work. There is a certain back and forth that exists between bloggers that can be truly motivational. I think this sense of community can be a great way to develop and maintain students' interest in writing, while teaching them to be acutely aware of their audience. It will show students that their writing is important, and not just to their teacher.
Richardson also makes the point that the use of blogs in the classroom can help students to understand new literacies, which will be essential to them as technology continues to advance. With that in mind, I can't help but think that to choose not to expose my students to the world of blogging and social media would be to do them a great disservice.
Richardson makes note of a few blogs in particular which are successfully integrating technology into the classroom. I was especially intrigued by Mr. C's Classroom Blog, which chronicles this teacher's experiences teaching in a fifth grade classroom. His blog serves a variety of purposes, among them that it allows parents and taxpayers to view, at any time, what his class has been learning and working on, and it creates a connection between, as he says, his students and the world at large.
If you are a teacher, to what extent do you use blogs with your students?
I don't have my own class yet, but I've been thinking of using the blog in place of the response journal - less bulky, less back-and-forth, less likely to lose it! I like your point about the community aspect from blogging - sometimes students don't get that in the classroom, but maybe blogging can help facilitate it as well?
ReplyDeleteI have not figured out how to start using blogs yet, but am throwing around a few ideas in my head. I am thinking of either logic puzzles or thought-provoking logic questions that have more than one solution. I don't want to just post math problems, because once one student gets the answer I don't think any other students would work on it once its done. I am hoping to figure it out by the end of the semester!
ReplyDeleteWhile I am not an educator I do agree that Blogging can be a great tool to use in the classroom to help build literacy skills of students in a sort of informal way. It almost seems as though it removes some of the pressures students may feel if they had to turn in a paper versus having a constant dialog via a blog about the same topic. A teacher may be able to probe a little more and push the students thought process more through the use of a blog versus providing feedback after having them turn in a one page paper on the topic. If I was teaching I would definitely try to find a way to incorporate blogging into my lesson plan.
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