Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Post 3: bLoGs
I also made a blog for CEP this week on Blogger.com. With the blogs I can see making a class blog that is like a teacher diary for each school day. I will not bash my students or say 'god I had a horrible day and these students suck', but I could say daily what the students are working on, what new subjects are going to be introduced, and any kind of activities the class and the school are going to be having for the coming week. Parents would also be able to have access to the blog from home, work, or at a library. Parents could also make comments with questions that I could respond to. I also believe that my first graders could make their own blogs chronicling their school days and it could be like an online journal for them. The strength with blogging is parents do not have find the time to call me (the teacher) at a convenient time for everyone involved to ask questions. With a class blog, parents can simply type a question/comment into the blog at 3 am if they needed to. Also, for efficiency, I can have all my parent’s questions and my responses in one public format, so that if multiple parents have the same question they may be able to find it in the post/comment news feed before having to ask me and wait for a response. The only weaknesses I can see with the 'class blog' is that with the public format of the comments a parent/student can write whatever they want in the comment box. A parent could talk about a personal issues on the public blog, bash me or my teaching abilities, or a student could get onto the blog and write inappropriate content in the comment area that would be public to everyone following the blog, under their parent’s name (kids will be kids). Lastly when it comes to blogs I feel that if I helped all of the students set one up and then gave time during computer lab to journal about school or a prompt I gave them, I think that students would be able to master the technology of blogging. Also I feel that if I sent home a paper format telling how to get parents logged on to the blog, I could get parents to start blogging as well. Furthermore, I would need give a lesson on ‘appropriate blog content’ to my students, just so they know the boundaries.
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I really the ideas you gave for using blogs in the classroom, especially the part about involving the parents and having ongoing discussions with them. I think that's a great way to ease some of stress that parents can feel. It also could help strengthen that home-to-school connection for students, which, as we've learned, is incredibly important!
ReplyDeleteI also like how you talked about having the students use the blog to respond to writing prompts and other assignments. I think that is a really cool idea and can help those students who struggle writing really express their ideas fully. And since the connection between technology and education is only going to grow, it's good to teach the students how to use computers/internet as a tool and a resource for their learning.
Good evening!
ReplyDeleteI also very much enjoyed the ideas you had for successfully using blogs in the classroom, especially your thought on giving a pre-lesson on proper blog usage to the students. Although it sounds a bit obvious now that I read it I think it is something I would have otherwise looked over and left uncovered. As adults and as active students it can be easy for us to forget that everyone is not born knowing everything, and something as simple as a blog could actually prove to be rather daunting for a student who is unfamiliar with the concept. By giving them this mini lesson they could apply what they learn not only in your own classroom but in other or future courses. So I thank you for putting that one out there!
Caroline Paredes
Thank you for the comment Alice, I completely agree with your view on how getting parents involved will help to strengthen that home-to-school connection. This is a good point because then students feel more accountable for their school work because mom or dad knows what they did at school and knows their upcoming tests/assignments.
ReplyDeleteHey Caroline I liked your comment! Yeah, it might seem completely obvious to us seasoned bloggers that everything we write is public (unless we change the settings) but I can see parents and students thinking that because they have their own account that only the blog host/author/teacher has access to all of the posts/comments made on the blog. So every aspect of blogging such as privacy should be addressed.