Sunday, September 22, 2013

Blogging

Do you use blogging in your classroom? How do you use it?

If you have never used blogging, have you thought about incorporating it into your teaching practice? If so, how?

What do you view as the benefits and/or drawbacks of blogging with students?

16 comments:

  1. Hey Michelle,
    I just started blogging this year with Journalism (thanks for getting me going!) and in my yearbook class. I've used it to keep us organized (by putting the goals for the day up), keep track of in-class tasks, initiate conversations, as well as create a sense of community. Once students have signed permission slips to participate in the blog, it's easy to incorporate images to showcase what students were up to that day. Great for the students, handy for the parents as well.

    The drawbacks are minimal. I do have a hard time logistically keeping track of who has actually followed through on commenting on other blogs, especially if they do not comment on time. However, I'm considering having them self-reflect on their responses and giving an overall grade based on the self-reflection and my general sense of their participation.

    Thanks for bringing me into the blogging world!

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  2. A great benefit to have students keep blogs is that parents who work can get involved by leaving comments for students. It's an easy way for them to volunteer away from the school.

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  3. I am on a different end of blogging which is working with students in the Academic Support Center who have to blog for many classes. Currently, I have one student in a particularly challenging class on Mideast Studies. The great part of the blog is that if he needs two hours to get through the material vs. another student needing one hour, that doesn't show. In the end, everyone blogs after they do their prep work. I also noticed that he is looking at other kids' blogs to compare and see if what he has done is meeting the standards.

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    1. It is good to hear that your student is actually looking at other students blogs. As a teacher who has tried to integrate blogging, I have found myself wondering if the students *really* look at other students blogs or are just doing it to fulfill a requirement.

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  4. I've used a couple sites to get my kids blogging. One is edublogs - the kids enjoyed the bells and whistles of this site but it was extremely challenging to maintain it and to enroll my students into classes/groups since they don't have school email addresses. I then switched to ClassChatter. It worked but didn't have the bells and whistles. I don't feel the students were enthusiastic about posting.

    I'm going to try Edmodo this year. I do find that I need to monitor posts because seventh-graders tend to get very "creative" in what they say to each other without supervision. I'm hoping they see this as an opportunity to communicate and to get excited about what we're learning and not just another assignment.

    Any suggestions as to how to maintain enthusiasm?

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    1. Tisha, I use KidBlog and I love it - it has some bells and whistles but not too many. I also add the users myself so I don't have to have emails or passwords for kids. In addition, I can actually manage their comments by just changing the setting. Their posts and comments get sent to me by approval before they're posted - makes it safer!

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  6. I do use blogging in my classroom. I really like it, and the kids do, too! I first have a class blog, and it's all under my name, but they each have individual pages. We also have a Daily Blog page, where each week a different student is responsible to blog about the day. It's great because it gets them writing to a real audience, and then their parents actually look because it's their own child.

    As we finish writing pieces I'll let them post their work on their blog for their parents and grandparents to see, but also for their classmates to see and comment on. It gives them more motivation to write well and share, and they love to see what other classmates are saying. We'll also use our blog to have conversations about books. At times, I'll have them respond to our read aloud book and post it for others to see. It's nice, because the conversation can continue beyond that moment when we have to get to special.

    Now that we have a laptop for each student there aren't many drawbacks, if any. They're able to type when they get a chance, and they can do it right in our classroom!

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    1. The idea of having a student blog about the day is fantastic, so much more interesting than simply having the teacher do it. Hopefully it might inspire interest in a discussion among students about the class in general.

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  7. I've had my students create group blogs--that was all kinds of fun--and it ended with some blogging awards with much student voting and riotous good times. So they were blogging teams of sorts, and they had topics to focus on. They worked on their writing as well as their attention to audience and purpose.

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    1. The idea of awards is a fantastic idea to generate excitement and attention among the kids. Anything that would get students creating online discussion ahead of time would be interesting.

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  8. I have just implemented a classroom blog this year. Currently my students have used this for creative writing purposes, given a specific prompt. I have had them airdrop their document to me and then I post it onto our class website. I was worried about how to do this at the middle school level, however am now thinking about using some of the suggested resources (kidblog.com). I teach special education and have students who are excited about writing. I will however edit this work with them prior to posting as I want them to feel confident about their writing as they already have a heightened awareness of what others think of them. I think that this will give them a platform to share their work and ideas and also demonstrate that they are published writers.

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  9. At one point I tried blogging with my students but at that point, I was not as comfortable with blogger and I had not played around with it and didn't know how to have it be a secure place (my school was very strict on student published work). I have used other "blogging" tools through Goodreads which my students, which is private with me but can also be shared with the group. This was great. At my new school I've been trying Edmodo to do the same sort of thing. Changing platforms is difficult and trying to find the one that is actually the most user-friendly is also challenging. I like the idea of using it more for reflection (I've had most of their blogging done via quickwrites on prompts.) I think I'll try it!

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  10. I have started using blogging for the first time this year, and my experience is that the more advanced students (hence, better and more confident writers) really enjoy it. They interact and respond respectfully and thoughtfully to each other's posts. The resistant readers/writers/learners really dislike blogging because their work is no longer just between them and me. It's "out there".

    I have a list of "Top 10 Discussion Board rules" and a Discussion Board rubric that I'd be willing to email anyone if interested. sylviadowharvey@sad27.org

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  11. I've used blogs in the past for online discussion surrounding specific books or topics. Students are responsible both for creating and responding to questions and others' comments.

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  12. I have used blospot in my creative writing class and had a lot of success with it. However, we did have a problem creating meaningful comments. We tried to both post and articulate those comments, but students had problems creating those meaningful comments that would promote reflection for other students. The usual response was "I like .... " or "I really like blank...." Sometimes there would be a "I wish you could..." But it is rare. How do you get students to respond in a meaningful way to one another's writing.

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