Having “over 100 million people” (Richardson, 2009) develop blogs, the education world needs to start to incorporate blogging into the classroom to accomplish new and exciting opportunities for student learning. Teaching three different courses – American Literature, Composition, and Freshmen English, I have considered developing a class portal for my students to have direct access to course materials, handouts, reading assignments, and supplementary links to content. A class portal through a blog would allow the educator to have all meaningful information in one location for students and parents to access.
Students in my composition course could benefit from blogging by creating personal blogs (using a pseudonym or first names only to protect privacy) to serve as an online journal. Most importantly, blogs provide an immediate audience who may write and return comments, something that essays or private journals cannot do (Richardson, 2009). Their writing, like it or not, would be available for others to read and enjoy. These weblogs would truly “expand the walls of the classroom” (Richardson, 2009). Where else do students have an immediate audience to showcase their writing?
In addition to my composition course, my American Literature course could use the blogs to stimulate discussions among students. Students, who are quiet or shy in large and small group setting, may feel comfortable responding to questions behind a computer screen and a keyboard. Students are able to answer questions, offer insight, and inquire on specific topics. These students would benefit from the constructivist approach of education where the students, not the teacher, generate the learning. By utilizing blogs, students construct knowledge via online collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. These discussions can then be used the next day in class bridging the instruction from the day before or connecting to a new concept.
While these are a few ideas of how to use blogs successfully in the classroom, I look forward to implementing these strategies into the classroom. I’ll try to monitor my classroom blog’s progress – successes and failures – on this blog.
References
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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6 comments:
Hello,
As I was reading about your ideas about blogging, I was asking myself, How do we know who is really writing on the blog? Also, how can we make sure students don't just go get information in another website copy and paste it to put on our blog? We as adults are more responsible and care for our work. Students do not always think as we do.
So discussion should always be based on specific information that only our students can relate and will need to be different from one year to another. How do we do that if we have to use the same material because of the curriculum and the standards?
Maybe students will really enjoy blogging and therefore will do their work. This is a new area for my students and me; I am not sure how they would react. When do you plan to implement blogging in class? Would students be blog in class or at home?
Helene11.weblog.com
Hi Brad,
Like you I would like to use my blog to post assignments, upcoming events and generally what we are doing in class. What are your thoughts regarding students without access to computers, should they be accountable as well? Should be provide class-time for these activities? That is my drawback, I so not want any of my students to feel at a disadvantage. I think my students would love to journal as well, although some write very personal things, they have come to enjoy writing in their journal and write...well personal things, haha. Should there be guidelines on appropriate and inappropriate material. These are just things I am questioning from my perspective, good luck!
Helene, thanks for responding to my post. Here are a few of my reactions.
"How do we know who is really writing on the blog?"
This definitely is a potential issue. However, I don't think that academic integrity on the computer is much different than academic integrity in the classroom. Whenever we assign homework, we do not necessarily know who completed the work. We can only stress the importance of integrity.
"...how can we make sure students don't just go get information in another website copy and past it to put on our blog"
To prevent this, we can teach our students the importance of citing their sources and inserting links to these references. This would teach them how to use others' ideas to further their own.
Brad Feick
HS English
Edie,
I agree with you that we need to be sensitive of students who do not have immediate access to computers at home. To avoid this, we can give students a hard copy of the assignment and recommend that all students write their responses ahead of time. Then students can go quickly online to post these responses before school, during a study hall, or after school. With the world using more and more technology, our students need to problem solve to overcome technological disadvantages.
As for students writing about personal issues in notebooks versus in a blog, students need to be aware of the consequences of such postings in a public or classroom only blog. If each student is creating a personal blog, you may be able to turn privacy settings on and only allow certain people, like the teacher, to follow the journal.
Brad Feick
HS English
I like your ideas of using blogs. It is important to start small. As you mentioned, I would also start with using a blog as a class portal for access to information as well as a place to start writing responses.
Even students who don't have computer access at home usually do have it at school. All of the public junior high schools I have been to lately have computers readily available in hallways and common areas. However, most of these schools have blogs blocked. This would be a hurdle to overcome.
In response to Helene's concern about plaigerism, I don't see how blogs would create a greater problem than there already is. It is critical to teach students about this early and often. Also, creating assignments that are unique and require opinions and original thought is also important.
Brad, I agree that there will be success and failure in using blogs in the classroom. The future is not written yet, and forging the path will require making mistakes along the way.
April
K-8 Educator
Brad,
Using blogs as a portal sounds like a time management dream come true! As Richardson (2009) asserts, "From an organizational standpoint, the ability to keep histories of work in an organized, searchable, easily shareable space is an important development." This would really help students who are absent or suffer from disorganization, among many other benefits. Have you created this yet or in the process? I'm assuming it's time consuming at first but worth it in the long run. Still, I'm wondering just how much time it takes.
Thanks for all of the wonderful blogging ideas!
Tara Minnerly
7th Grade Language Arts
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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