Thursday, October 25, 2012

Blogging about Blogging


 
How can blogging impact your instruction?
By allowing students the opportunities to share their thoughts by reflecting on a post question or another peer's reply, the teacher is opening up a forum to encourage writing. Improving writing skills is a never ending goal, for all students. Having a simple process, but including high expectations is key. With blogging, the teacher can set up the expectations, i.e.: correct grammar and spelling, complete sentences and developed thoughts, but still include social media aspects which students gravitate towards.
Rockhurst University Graduate student, Brady Cramer shares his thoughts:
Perhaps it is the mindset of the historian to live in the past. Sure, social studies encompasses economics, sociology, government and political science, but the bulk of the social studies sections in public education relate to or simply are history instruction. With minds in the past and technology leapfrogging itself every day, advancement in the classroom seems to be a particular struggle for secondary education history teachers. Not all hope is lost, as some technologies that are not exactly cutting edge are re purposed through these innovative tools by some teachers who are tired of living in a stale method of instruction. Using blogs, wikis, and digital media-sharing spice up classroom instruction and shake the dust off of inactive students and teachers. As mentioned in previous blogs, (The Future of Literacy, October 4, 2012) students now read, write, and communicate in way different that even just a decade ago. Blogs allow for students to informally write about guided topics and challenge each other in an academically productive way (Wilson, 67). When students in high school or even my age take to the computer regularly to share their ideas voluntarily, it is not such a stretch to convert those thoughts to an educational arena. Wikis and digital media-sharing sites such as wikispace.com or youtube.com are not only familiar to many students but also allow for collaboration in a safe environment with teacher instruction. Videos on YouTube can be protected to allow only certain viewers, as can invite-only wikis. As students’ interests change, it is as important for teachers to appeal to that as it is to take advantage of their learning strengths.

So, again, going back to my first question: How can blogging impact your instruction? Post a comment on THIS blog!

Wilson, E. K., Wright, V. H., Inman, C. T., & Matherson, L. H. (2011).
Retooling the Social Studies Classroom for the Current Generation.
Social Studies, 102(2), 65-72.
 

14 comments:

  1. Blogging allows collaborative work between students and the teacher. Ideally, this is a very efficient and fun way to deal with subject matter.

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  2. It can bring students closer together outside of the classroom and give them easier access to course information.

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  3. Blogging can be a positive ideal in the classroom; it allows the teacher the ability to share further information that may not be given in the classroom due to time constraints. It also allows the students the ability to read supplemental material at their own pace.

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  4. Blogging can impact your instruction in a postive way by opening a different door to allow for communication between you and your students. Also, it gives the students another way to access the course material and for the teacher to have another assessment tool.

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  5. Blogging can impact your instruction by helping to keep your students organized, and could also be utilized for parent communication.

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  6. I think that blogging can make learning more interactive and visually appealing. Students might feel more comfortable providing feedback and asking questions through blog comments than they do in front of the other students.

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  7. Blogging offers another way to think about the "flipped" classroom experience...other than the video lecture, that is.

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  8. It can allow students to share information, reflect or ask questions in the classroom or at home on specific content or subject areas. This could work as an engagement strategy, homework assignment or even a closure strategy within a lesson plan.

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  9. Students can have more access to information taught in class and can use it to their advantage to continue learning outside of class.

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  10. Blogging could impact instruction by preparing the student for the lesson before class. Also it could help students with homework instructions or questions.

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  11. Blogging can create a virtual reference for students to refer to for the lesson content. They can also interact with other students by posting responses in the comments section or contributing to the blog themselves.

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  12. It can help students express their thoughts on a topic, and to work collaboratively on assignments.

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  13. I'm wondering how we can monitor blogs to keep the students' information private and safe? Would parents need to give their permission first?

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  14. Blogging could create a classroom forum where students could access important concepts from home, dialogue with the instructor and each other through a comment thread, and find archived content from past units to review.

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