I have recently starting blogging as part of my new job in the district. Initially, I had wanted to send out electronic newsletters; but, felt that this form of ongoing communication would be a better fit for the district's needs. By blogging, I can keep staff informed of what was going on in our district related to technology in a timely and current fashion.
From my experience, I started to really dig into how this form of writing could be used in the classroom. I researched all over the internet how other people are using this forum in their classroom. It seems as though students and teachers in both England and Australia have utilized this tool the best. I found some amazing blogs from both these countries that I will be sharing with teachers as exemplars.
I love the idea that blogs are current as opposed to static websites. The option to post to the world, brings the student involvement and expectation to new levels that perhaps was not as possible in years past. Through my own experience with our monster project, I worked harder than I probably would have knowing that others would view it and perhaps comment on my creation. Knowing that I am not a great creative writer and not to mention a poor artist, posting on a blog certainly put me out of my comfort zone. However, that being said, it made me work a little harder at my creation.
The benefits that a blog offer as mentioned in the blog powerpoint, Blogging in the Classroom, by Lindsay Powers, are: commenting, collaboration and discussion features makes the blog that much more powerful. Students are really able to use those 21st century skills to their fullest potential. Offering a variety of instructional tools and assessments for those students that traditionally may not have had an outlet for their work is refreshing. I can see blogging anonymously can give certain students the freedom to express themselves in a way that is non-threatening.
I will continue to use blogging personally as well as promote it professionally in the district that I work in. I certainly see that blogging is a wonderful tool that can be used to promote literacy across all content areas that offers both teachers and students a non-traditional platform to express themselves.
Thank you for your honesty about one of your limitations as a writer. I like the point that you made, sometimes we have to work a little harder to get our students focused on our lessons. I know for me I have extremely large class sizes and I can't speak to everyone all the time so I wanted to use my blog as a free and open communication with me and my students like you commented on. I thought as you did about blogging but now I can see the benefits of it and have it can be an up to date and effective communicator.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird that you put "blogging anonymously". Today in fact I had a student anonymously post on our classroom blog "F%&^ You Alex". The whole class was in an uproar trying to figure out who said it and what I was going to do about it. The problem for me was that I had no way of knowing who did it without taking up the chain of command. It was a learning experience for me as I just took it for granted that the students would act like young adults, and.... I guess they did.
ReplyDeleteEverything has it pro's and con's!
True! I teach high school students and I can see how they could have a field day with this. I know there is a feature in blogger that you can screen the comments before they are posted. It's unfortunate that that may be an option for you - wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to worry about such things?
ReplyDeleteI think that is a good idea to have a blog to keep people updated but I guess you would have to be sure that everyone would actually read the blog. I know at our school we have a few co-workers who are not very computer literate and they struggle with doing anything on the computer. But I guess that if they really wanted to be informed they would learn how to be able to access the blog.
ReplyDeleteI guess the thought should have crossed my mind but I didn't even consider that you could post anonymously and that students might take advantage of that. It would be nice to turn on the feature that let you preview the comments before they are viewable by the rest of the class. However, viewing every post might get time consuming and you would have to check it pretty regularly in order to keep it up to date.
ReplyDeleteSharon
ReplyDeleteUsing a blog to keep your colleagues up to date with technology resources and practices is a great idea.Teachers are also becoming very familiar with the blog format and will then be more apt to use it as a classroom tool themselves.
Good luck with the implementation.