Through discussions and readings, I have learned that blogs can play an important role in a classroom. There are many different uses for blogs. Blogs can be used to help with class organization and management, to help facilitate interaction among students, to increase parent awareness and involvement, and to provide links to internet resources that are available.
Being new to blogs, I feel I need to take baby steps to incorporate blogs into my classroom. One way I can see using a classroom blog is to provide a place to post announcements, important dates (end of grading periods, state testing dates), expectations, and homework assignments. This would allow for on-going conversations between students, parents and teacher. It seems that it would also be valuable to post links to resources that are available on-line that the students could access for help.
Even though blogs are new to me, I am sure that they are not new to my high school students. What will be new is that students will need to learn and understand the difference between social interaction with their peers and academic interaction. Blogs are becoming an important part of communication for education, companies.....for society.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Anna,
ReplyDeleteI think your biggest challenge with technology is similar to that of many teachers in the U.S. (including me), which is continuing to change with the times. I find it tough to stay updated on all of the newest technology and seeing as you are a high school teacher, your students must be very technology savvy. I think that the sooner you implement new technology into your classroom the better off you'll be. I know that I typically learn by doing...you never know what you can do until you try it out. Your idea sounds great and it sounds like you might be able to implement it starting next year!
Anna, Good idea to take baby steps in implementing blogs into your classroom, as the book suggested. The book offered so many good uses of blogs. I found myself getting really excited, wanting to try several. However, it is best to take one idea and commit to implementing it well, than to try lots of ideas and have them be ineffective and unsuccessful.
ReplyDeleteYour idea for using a blog for classroom updates, assignments, and announcements would be a great start. I especially like the idea of posting links on the blog to websites that could help students further understand the concepts you are covering in class.
Your biggest challenge will probably be learning as much as you can about the potential of blogs in the classroom, and then launching the idea of student blogs. This will require a lot of student training to establish procedures, expectations, and guidelines. I bet once blogs become a regular way for students to submit writing and collaborate with peers, you will see the benefits of blogs through increased student motivation and interaction.
I think baby steps are important for all teachers trying to implement any new strategies in class. Starting off by simply posting one way information (i.e. web 1.0) where you post and people read is the best bet. I know even keeping up with that is hard to do. I think maybe using the RSS feed to keep your blog current and automatically posting news articles that relate to what you are doing in class is a very cool addition to blogging. Most articles, videos, items on the web now have little links below them that allow you to automatically post them to your weblog/facebook/myspace etc.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteI agree that my students probably know more about technology than me. I also agree that the sooner that I start implementing technology, the better. Thank you for your encouragement to just try it.
Jen,
ReplyDeleteOne goal I would have for implementing a blog is to increase student motivation and interaction. I plan on spending the rest of this school year and the summer discovering ways to use a blog in the classroom as well as ways to manage the blog effectively. One of my concerns is to make sure that students are posting appropriate comments. I have heard that it is possible as the manager of the blog to approve comments before they are posted. I really like this idea.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI have discovered the benefits of a RSS feed. Having links established so that updates to blog I want to follow are sent to one location is a real time saver. Before I realized this, I was feeling overwhelmed about how I would find the time to constantly check the blogs the interest me.