Blogging has been around for quite a while now and I was always sort of indifferent to it. Feeling like it could get tedious at times I just sort of wrote it off from the beginning for my own personal use. As a teacher of faculty here at Pace I have had to teach a number of them how to use and create blogs. As each one would come to me I would get a new insight as to what they wanted to do and how they were going to use it in their class. It is so interesting to hear different idead and different takes on the blogging experience.
I most definately see great potential in blogging and would use it as a tool in my classroom one day. I think what Professor Calvert said about, "students sitting with a little more attention, writing a little more carefully, revising with purpose" is right on. I see this as a positive driving force for students. Having a post for the world to see encourages them to take their time, be thoughtful, and put more focus into their work. Sometimes this can be lost on students who just create a draft in the classroom that is never to be seen.
I believe blogging still has a ways to go in the classroom given the number of educational restrictions, but even with those, I think it encourages students to write and that is so so important. We need students to be interested and want to blog, and that is probably one of the biggest struggles yet...how do we keep them interested?
Blogging is not necessarily going to change our traditional classroom but what it is doing, and what it will hopefully continue to do is enhance it. This "virtual extension" of the classroom is another avenue for students to learn and grow. Using blogging to reflect, criticize, question, and react to what is going on in their life, their classroom, their community can be extremely effective, can give students the opportunity they may not have had to express their ideas and, most importantly, continuously gets them to write and improve their writing and communication skills.
Lindsay;
ReplyDeleteI love how you mentioned that blogging is getting the students to write and that should be the main concern. As long as students are writing.. we are in a good place. If blogging will increase students wanting to write, then I think they will have an impact on the classroom.
Blogging is an excellent way to get students to think about a certain topic, and then write a substantial paragraph about it. The teacher could even ask the students what they're interested in, and base his/her topics off of what the students want to talk about. The teacher blogs I have seen in my placement often put links on the bottom for students to check out before the respond, then often put a minimum amount of sentences for the students to type out to get full credit. (4th graders had to write 4-6 sentences I believe on the topic of the day/week).
ReplyDeleteHi Lindsay!! I agree that any kind of way to get students to write is ONE OF THE most important benefits of blogging. I also find that the immediacy of a student seeing their published words is really amazing. Since kids are so caught up in consuming technology, it's great when they realize they can actually produce technology and it can give them an equal amount of joy and pleasure. I think a lot more students would be engaged and motivated if teachers actually did use the blog format along with other ed tech types of things in the classroom. We have to give the kids what they want!--which is technology!!
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