How to make a blogging tool an effective tool in the classroom

So far the consensus of the group seems to be that blogs can be a great tool in the classroom. It can be used to generate discussion both inside and outside the classroom. Once students have been given a starting point, through their discussion with the teacher and other students, new discussion or new avenue of thought will be brought up to expansion the original discussion and eventually the student’s learning. Also, the point has been made that blogging will allow a greater range of students to be heard, either because the student could not be heard in class due to time constraints or shyness in the classroom. The virtual setting may allow for students to feel more comfortable in sharing their opinions.

However, what is lacking in this discussion is how to implement blogging into the school community and not just in one classroom. If students are to be successful in this form of academic communication then it needs to be used and reinforced throughout the grade levels. If a student is expected to blog just in one class, the student may find it fun and exciting, but may not a necessity. For example, I experience a situation one year, where a large number of students did not know how to write an essay for their history class. All these students were familiar with were answering multiple choice questions because this is what they were taught. In addition, because students were not immersed into a culture of essay writing, I had to spend a good of amount of time building the culture of essay writing. Lastly, instead of building upon their essay writing skills, students spent a large amount of time doing remediation work. These same situations can apply to blogging, instead of every year a spending time to do remediation work with students and create a culture of blogging, students should be immersed into it as soon as they enter a school, so they can be mentally prepared to work with this new tool.

Peter