Blogging in the Classroom

http://blogs.worldbank.org/category/tags/blogging

Over the past several years, my experience with blogs has only been on a personal level (usually to check up on the latest happenings and recruiting news surrounding Duke basketball). With a push to have students gain 21^st century skills, many teachers are experimenting with ways to use blogs to improve writing skills and have students collaborate with one another.

 If you haven’t taken the time to read up on how blogs are currently being used in the classroom, I encourage you to do so. Richardson’s (2010) book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms is a great starting point for the novice blogger. Again, Edutopia has a tremendous amount of resources as well. (http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration). I like checking out the current uses of technology via Edutopia because I am one of those people who try to avoid reinventing the wheel – if it’s out there on the Internet and I can apply it to something I’m doing in my classroom, why not (with proper citation when needed, of course!)? 

Taking in to account some of the ideas from Richardson’s book, I would like to try blogging with my 7^th and 8^th grade special education students. I’m not sure how “doable” it will be given the amount of filters and blocked sites from our district’s server. I’ll also have to tackle the task of creating student emails to access the blog site. If you’ve ever had students manage accounts and passwords, you know what a tremendous undertaking it can be. There is always one student every week who can’t remember their password, and/or can’t find where they wrote it down. It may sound silly, but that’s one of the biggest problems I have with using technology – students forgetting their passwords!

As you may know, I teach Direct Instruction Writing, so blogging would easily fit in to many of the writing projects in my classroom. In particular, I have students respond to journal topics on a monthly basis. This addresses their IEP goals by having them understand paragraph formation, use details and descriptions to enhance their topic, and use the proper conventions of writing. In the past, I had my students write about simple topics (tell a funny story, share a time when you felt scared), and I had them submit their entries to me using an iPad application called iDiary. The students like iDiary, but there is no room for collaboration and students are unable to publish their work for “the whole world to see”. Blogging would change this. In a previous graduate class, I also reflected on how I would like to revamp my journal topics and have students discuss current events or issues in society. I believe if I introduced blogging by creating a class site for students to share their journal entries, it would allow students to begin to collaborate with each other, expand on each other’s ideas, and it would force them to focus on their writing and grammar skills since the blogs would be published publicly.  Obviously, this tool would influence students to dig a little deeper to create quality responses and think about their writing on a deeper level, so they are clearly conveying their thoughts and ideas for others to review and respond.

 I know there are many more teachers using blogs in much more meaningful ways. How have you used blogs in your classroom? Have you seen more creative ways to use blogs as an educational tool?

http://amillionblogs.com/the-best-free-online-blog-sites/