Many of you have thought about it, considered it, maybe even have tried it yourself...but how does blogging really benefit educators and their students?
First of all, what exactly is blogging, you may ask. Well according to wikipedia, A blog (a truncation of the expression web log)[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). (Wikipedia.org) Okay, so now how about Tedder's definition, a blog is a place for you to speak your mind about anything and everything (ok well almost...)...a digital journal of sorts. Blogs can also be used as a place teachers to draw in their students on a topic. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong way to blog. It is a place to be yourself! There are many sites that you can use to blog. I have simply added blog pages to my Weebly site. Blogger.com, wordpress, Kidblog.org, Edmodo, and many, many others offer blogging for free!
Many companies and websites are beginning to blog. Some are as simple as an announcement about the latest product, reviews on products or materials, or opportunities to announce how their product is being used. Recently my school was highlighted in a blog on the Thinking Maps website. Check it out here. Even celebrities have been on the blogging bandwagon to share experiences that they feel meaningful. But MOST importantly to me is that EDUCATORS and their STUDENTS are blogging!
There are MANY missed opportunities in the classroom for students to blog. There is no wrong way to blog, that is the awesome part about it. You just get on the site.....and WRITE!! I am going to share with you some examples of how I have used blogs in the past few years. I and several of my colleagues have used blogs in many ways, remember, there is no wrong way to blog. Click on the links to check out the different ways we used blogs to maybe get some ideas and see how it could work in your classroom!
When I was teaching 5th grade I used a blog to make announcements called Cheetah Chat. This was an opportunity for me to make class announcements or have students complete a task such as a survey. For a large part of the school year I did Morning Work through blog posts. This was a place where I often posted a video or picture that pertained to something we were discussing that day or something coming up. I would try to post thought provoking questions to get the students writing. Our 4th grade teachers used something similar called Write into the Day and they would Do this each day as a station during their Guided Reading time. We also used blogs as an opportunity to respond to reading we were doing in class, this was our Reader's Response Blog. We also tried it for math, but this was a little more difficult for students to grasp in the short time we had for Math. This was our Math Moments Reflections. Using a blog was also a great way to announce the upcoming topics for the week. This was my Davis "Hop"penings. Now as a tech Facilitator, I use blogs as a way to post classroom lesson work, show awesome things that we have done in classroom lessons, or awesome things that may help teachers in their classrooms!
Ok ....so there are examples that have worked for me. But what made them work? As a way to get quality responses from my students, I pulled up a few blog posts and had the class evaluate them and see if they really answered the questions and if they used complete sentences and punctuation, after a few rounds of student evaluation, their writing improved a LOT!! One thing I did try in Kindergarten was having my students tell me what to scribe for them in a blog. It was fun but very time consuming! They really enjoyed to chance to express themselves. 5th graders were also able to write their own blog entries. I found that through blogging, students were more motivated to write and often wrote more in response to a question than they would on paper. It also saves paper!!! So Why blog? Well why not?!! Give it a try and let me know how it goes. What's it going to hurt to put a little inspiration into your students?
First of all, what exactly is blogging, you may ask. Well according to wikipedia, A blog (a truncation of the expression web log)[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). (Wikipedia.org) Okay, so now how about Tedder's definition, a blog is a place for you to speak your mind about anything and everything (ok well almost...)...a digital journal of sorts. Blogs can also be used as a place teachers to draw in their students on a topic. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong way to blog. It is a place to be yourself! There are many sites that you can use to blog. I have simply added blog pages to my Weebly site. Blogger.com, wordpress, Kidblog.org, Edmodo, and many, many others offer blogging for free!
Many companies and websites are beginning to blog. Some are as simple as an announcement about the latest product, reviews on products or materials, or opportunities to announce how their product is being used. Recently my school was highlighted in a blog on the Thinking Maps website. Check it out here. Even celebrities have been on the blogging bandwagon to share experiences that they feel meaningful. But MOST importantly to me is that EDUCATORS and their STUDENTS are blogging!
There are MANY missed opportunities in the classroom for students to blog. There is no wrong way to blog, that is the awesome part about it. You just get on the site.....and WRITE!! I am going to share with you some examples of how I have used blogs in the past few years. I and several of my colleagues have used blogs in many ways, remember, there is no wrong way to blog. Click on the links to check out the different ways we used blogs to maybe get some ideas and see how it could work in your classroom!
When I was teaching 5th grade I used a blog to make announcements called Cheetah Chat. This was an opportunity for me to make class announcements or have students complete a task such as a survey. For a large part of the school year I did Morning Work through blog posts. This was a place where I often posted a video or picture that pertained to something we were discussing that day or something coming up. I would try to post thought provoking questions to get the students writing. Our 4th grade teachers used something similar called Write into the Day and they would Do this each day as a station during their Guided Reading time. We also used blogs as an opportunity to respond to reading we were doing in class, this was our Reader's Response Blog. We also tried it for math, but this was a little more difficult for students to grasp in the short time we had for Math. This was our Math Moments Reflections. Using a blog was also a great way to announce the upcoming topics for the week. This was my Davis "Hop"penings. Now as a tech Facilitator, I use blogs as a way to post classroom lesson work, show awesome things that we have done in classroom lessons, or awesome things that may help teachers in their classrooms!
Ok ....so there are examples that have worked for me. But what made them work? As a way to get quality responses from my students, I pulled up a few blog posts and had the class evaluate them and see if they really answered the questions and if they used complete sentences and punctuation, after a few rounds of student evaluation, their writing improved a LOT!! One thing I did try in Kindergarten was having my students tell me what to scribe for them in a blog. It was fun but very time consuming! They really enjoyed to chance to express themselves. 5th graders were also able to write their own blog entries. I found that through blogging, students were more motivated to write and often wrote more in response to a question than they would on paper. It also saves paper!!! So Why blog? Well why not?!! Give it a try and let me know how it goes. What's it going to hurt to put a little inspiration into your students?