I have not done much with blogs before this class, so it has been a great experience for me. I think blogging is a great way to communicate with others. I find blogging to be very safe and effective compared to social networking sites. I think blogging would be great in a classroom for students to incorporate technology into the classroom.
In a classroom, blogging would be a great communication tool. As a teacher, I would set up a blog site where the students and myself would blog about what happened during the week and what is planned for the future. I would send the web link to parents so that they could see what happened during the week and what is coming up. This would be a great way to communicate with parents because as teachers we often do not get that face to face communication with parents, so this would be a great alternative. This particular blog site could be used as the monthly newsletter as well. Each month I could post the big events that would happen during that particular month and post the concepts the students would be learning that month as well.
I would also use blogs for students to communicate with each other. Students could have their own blog site set up where they can post anything they learned throughout the week and anything they want to share with their classmates. I would then ask the students to respond to at least 2 other classmates about their posts so I could see the class interactions. I think it is important that students know how to communicate with each other and this would be a great way to develop those communication skills and writing skills using blogs.
Blogging in the classroom is a great idea, and I would definitely use it in my classroom.
Blogging seems a lot more secure than the social networking sites. In this class I have heard a lot of good ideas for people keeping parents up to speed with what is happening in the classroom with blogs, and I think that it could be really useful. The only thing I worry about with those types of things are the students and parents who may not have access at home. I know that at my first student teaching placement there were very few kids who had computers at home. That experience was very sobering because I think I had already started to think about how emailing parents was going to be my big way to keep in touch with them. That being said, if the majority of a class has computers at home the teacher could always send the monthly blog home with the student in a newsletter kind of format. There is definitely a lot of ways you could use blogging in an educational setting.
ReplyDeleteI would love to start a classroom blog. I think I talked about this in one of my posts using both blogging and a social networking site like Facebook. This way I could stay connected to all of my parents. I would also make copies of my blogs for parents who might not have access.
ReplyDeleteSocial networking sites like Ning also offer a great way to stay connected.
I would have to agree with all of you that blogging does seem more secure than social networking sites…although we are going to be discussing that tomorrow, so maybe we’re speaking too soon.
ReplyDeleteUsing the class blog as a communication tool for parents is great and convenient for those that have computers at home. As hard as it is to believe, many households do not have computers or maybe they have a computer but no internet access. Maybe there could be one night a month or every two months where the parents come to the school for a “Blogging Night” and the students could present the key features/post of the site.
In addition, I love the idea of requiring students to comment on two other classmates’ posts. It would be critical for teacher to monitor the commenting to ensure that no students were being singled or left out by their peers.
Great ideas for getting blogging started in your classroom. Think about how you will "group" students for responding to blogs. Just keeping it "respond to a couple of classmates" might lead to always the same ones getting the responses. Assigned blogging groups like we did in class might be something to at least try. Great ideas by your peers as well.
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