Blogging is an electronic form of journaling. One of the major benefits to blogging is the fact that you can put your thoughts into words and record them regularly and never worry about misplacing it, as we do so often with journals (or at least I do).
I think as a teacher (when the time comes), I would create a classroom blog. I would begin by posting specific classroom events. I would engage the students in conversation about they saw as the highlights of the week. Once they were comfortable with the concept of blogging, I would have the students create their own blog to discuss what they wanted, as log as it pertained to class events and assignments. They would need to post at least once a month, they could blog more often then that if they wanted, spelling and punctuation would be a factor in maintaining their blogs. Additionally, they would have to discuss news worthy information. They could decide who they wanted to have access to their blog and if they wanted to receive feedback. It is important to note, this assignment would be for a middle school aged class.
I think you have the right framework with your classroom blog. In fact the general framework would work with most subject areas and even on the high school level. However, having student blog about anything that they might find educational might be too broad. Starting students on a specific topic and have them respond to the topic maybe the way to go. For any school assignment, students need structure and direction.
ReplyDeleteReading your take on how blogging would be incorporated into the classroom I want to make sure that you don't forget to add yourself as a reader to your students blog. This would be of great importance since you need to monitor what they write. Another point that may need to be made is that there needs to be some guide line of what the students are going to blog about. I understand that you stated the blogs need to be pertained to class events and assignments but you may need to narrow that down even further. Working with Middle School students I can atest that they need direct guidance to assignments and exactly what you want from them. Leaving to much open for interpretation can be chaotic. Thanks for your insight. Your points are definitely points that I would use in my classroom when it pertains to blogging.
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