Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Use Of Blogs
How might one use a blog with 4th graders? I thought about this for a while and I thought of a few ways. I thought about the personal response or essential questions that are often asked at the end of a lesson. I thought about the importance of getting our students to write and how we are using journals more often. My thought is that we could take that journal and make it interactive by using it in blog format. I'm not saying to take away the paper and pencil journal book. It is important for our students to be able to write as well as type. Although we want our students to express their thoughts on paper society today is much more digital based. We have replaced mail, for the most part, with e-mail. Getting the students to write out the response is the first step. Getting them to type what they have written is the next. I would use a blog as a way for students to reflect on those essential questions or big pictures from the lesson. It would be much like their journal writing, allowing for personal thoughts and ideas to be expressed. It would allow for students to interact with others and comment on what other students thought. It might not be used everyday, as getting access to a computer is not always easy. It would be used maybe once a week or once during a unit in any given subject. I think students would get a lot out of being able to use the computer to discuss things with other students without it being just chat based. They love when they get to use to computer so to be able to show how their thoughts are represented on the internet to their parents would be pure joy to my students.
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Your ideas sound great for using a blog in your classroom. Will you allow all the students to look at each others or assign groups of students like we are for this class? I think it would be easier for students to be assigned groups, that could change every so often, than to read all their classmates posts. Students would most likely get more responses to their blog posts if they were in small groups. Students love writing in their journals and they love using computers, so I think your idea of combining the two is a great idea. Let us know how it goes once you try it with your students.
ReplyDeleteI love your suggestions for ways to use blogs and I agree with your comment about the direction our society is head. Our school just finished giving one of our school wide assessments for math on the computer. It was interesting to say the least. None the less, I too was excited about our new skill of creating a blog and wanted to utilize them in my classroom, but I found out that, in my county, they severely limit the sites the student are allowed to access. I cannot access anything that allows unedited freedom of speech, such as blogs, not even on my teacher computer. I am not sure if this is a problem at your school, but unfortunately it is at mine. I have been brainstorming ways around it but solutions are few and far between. One suggestion I received was to assign a blog posting at home as a sort of homework. It was a good suggestion but I have a few kids that would not be able to participate, due to lack of access to a computer. Any thoughts as to how to get around this?
ReplyDeleteI think the key to your post is the fact that you make it a point not to forget the fundamentals by forsaking the writing process. Technology is great but we must make sure that we never forget to cover the basics as well. I like that you have everything planned out into precise steps as well. I'm sure that you have thought of this but I would suggest small groups and rotating roles within the groups since your computer usage time is limited. Overall I think your idea is great.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of small groups. I had not thought of that but it is true. I have 23 students so putting them in small groups would be a great idea. I also could probably have a few of the assignments be whole group. I would not want to limit students from commenting on others if they wanted to. It is a good source of communication and connecting the students to one another. It is much needed with the students I teach.
ReplyDeleteAs for the lack of access that is definitely a problem. It is worse if your students can not access it at school. My first thought was to extend an invitation to the students to stay after school or come to the classroom at lunch time to do their work. This would involve staying with them in the classroom or computer lab but it allows them to complete the assignment. Since your computers at school do not allow access I would give them the prompt and ask them to write out a response. You could then transfer their writing to the blog if you wanted to or ask some students to write out comments in given time in class. It is really hard when they have no computer access. Does a website like classjump.com work at all for you? I guess not since they block any unedited freedom of speech.
I also like the idea of small groups. Another benefit would be that it would be another collaborative project for students to learn to actually work together. The interactive journal idea is wonderful as well. Students could write out any questions that they have about the lesson, or something that they were confused about, and other students could have the opportunity to reteach without the pressure.One of the obstacles to this would be making the opportunity for students to get online.
ReplyDeleteI did a survey at the beginning of the year to find out the percentage of students who had internet access at home. Thirty percent is not a very big number. Of course it will continue to grow.