How Can We Use Blogging in the Classroom?

Although I have never really had the chance to use blogging with any of my students in the past, the reading for this week and other resources I have viewed create great insight into different ways of using blogs in the classroom.  It was interesting to discover the many uses for blogging in the classroom.  One thing that concerned me about the students I have worked with is their lack of computer skills.  Working in an urban school district, many students do not have outside access to computers and, therefore, all computer skills must be honed in the classroom.  As a result, a few weeks would have to be spent on using a computer and improving typing and navigation skills.

If I were working with a higher grade elementary classroom (grades 4 or higher), I would love to use blogging as a creative book club.  In this way, students could interact with each other and each other's thoughts/comments through the blog set up by myself.  As a facilitator, I could propose questions or points-of-view that my students could answer or react to.  In addition, the students could comment back and forth to one another.  There would have to be set guidelines on what would be expected of the students (i.e. effective communication of ideas, number of posts, length of posts, etc.).

I also believe a classroom blog that could be visited by the families and friends of the students would be a creative way of involving important people in the classroom activities.  By creating a schedule of activities, projects or assignments, parents/guardians will be able to make sure their children are keeping up with their work in school.  Also, this could be an area where students with exemplary work could post it for others to see.  This could create a sense of accomplishment for both the students and their families!  But, I would be sure to read all of the comments before they are posted so we would not have any issues in the classroom.

As a future teacher, it is vital that I am able to reflect on my teaching practices and situations that arise throughout my career.  I believe that blogging would be a great way to reflect on lessons, activities, routines or other matters in the classroom (that are not confidential, of course!).  In this way, I would be able to received feedback from peers that may have had the same struggles.  This type of reflective practice will only strengthen my skills as a teacher!  I value the opinions of other, more experienced, teachers and would love for this type of interaction to be possible in order to benefit each other in the professional world!

Standards met by blogging: ELA 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2.  Not all of these standards would be met in one single blog, but all of these standards could be covered depending on the types of skills the students will be using to write the blogs.

After viewing several videos online about blogging in the classroom, I found this one created by a group of students.  I found this video to be an interesting insight (from the students' perspective) into why we, as teachers, need to keep progressing with the new technology of the times.  Here goes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfJETK3am1M