Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The communication power of blogging in the classroom
One of the first blogs that I ever had my class do was a reading blog. In our school, students are required to read so many books per semester. Knowing that most students do not talk to one another about what they read I created a blog that I allowed them to use after their class work was done. The results amazed me! I had students recommending books, discussing books they had read, and asking others for suggestions. By the end of the first week there were 110 comments. I saw students who would never speak with each other in school discussing books and scenes they liked as though they were old friends. It helped them find common ground in class and I started noticing that once they had blogged about it they felt more comfortable talking about it in class and in the halls. The two years I have used this blog was for 7th and 8th graders and I will continue to use it in the future. Perhaps the most impressive thing to me was, using the blog wasn’t for a grade, it was a resource and boy did they use it.
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I bet this was pretty amazing to see how the nontalkers in your class have transformed. The question I have is how did you get your students to post about the book without giving away too much information? Also how many computers are the able to use in order to do this and how much time do they have? This is one of the ideas that I have for my classroom, however, I only have 2 computers in my room and I don't really know how I would fit this into my schedule quite yet. Thoughts about doing it in the computer lab once a week since each student gets their own computer????
ReplyDeleteI always think about blogging in an elementary setting as that is where I teach. After reading your blog I thought about how my middle and high school experiences would have been different if blogging were in place. It is so true that students stay in their comfort zone and cliques, it is great that your students have opened their communication doors and found new connections to classmates. It is great when your students take an idea and run with it. Did you have any problems with students chatting on non-school related topics? I have had issues with students chatting on my blog about random things that were not what they were supposed to be discussing. I have learned that I must check all the blog logs daily, yet another new routine. I wish my computer could just talk to me and let me know when something inappropriate is going on, like Kit the talking car... maybe someday.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that students might not follow the guidelines. Those of you who have done this before - what percentage of the students did not? Will I need to read every post/comment before they can be published???
ReplyDeleteI like your Page - by the way! Nice job.
These are the types of stories that make me excited to be an educator. I want to create a blog for my students for the discussion of current events and cannot wait to read the interplay of conversations between my students.
ReplyDeleteKim, I have only had a few students not use it properly. Maybe 5% of my total students. I always let the students publish but as the administrator I have the option to go back and remove items from the blog log. I always give my students a rubric and proper use is part of that so there grade suffers when it is misused.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback. I was hoping that it would only be a small percentage. I figured that I would need to have some very tight boundaries and grade them accordingly. I can't wait to try this next school year!
ReplyDeleteTo everyone,
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the comments. I thought I would offer a couple of ideas after reading responses to let you know what has led to some of my blogs being successful.
Our school is starting to really crack down on cyber bullying. We take time to let students know what it is and what could happen to students if they are caught. I always explain to my students that what they write stays there until I take it off. That is part of our schools program settings. I make sure they know that anything they write down that would be counter productive to class would be reviewed and actions may be taken.
Explaining to my students what our program is and the rules behind blogging has made all the difference.