HOT Blogging: Light Some Fires!

Encourage others to share their voice and their passion for learning will ignite.

Why blog? Who cares? You should.  In a digital world where online communication can be cold and negative, here are some ways to make it HOT and positive.

Two graduate students in my ED  6030 course: Technology in the Classroom at Rockhurst University, did some research about blogging and the important impact it can have on students. 

Ashley Duvall, RU graduate student shares what she learned from her research article:

The issue I have chosen to learn more about for this journal is blogging and its place in the classroom. As an elementary teacher, literacy is a huge area of concern that I need to be on top of for my students. The new literacies created by technology make my job more complex, and finding ways to help students with comprehension and writing skills in this changing society requires that I seek knowledge of new teaching strategies. Blogging has become a hot topic for its effectiveness in helping students with comprehension, synthesis, and writing, and because of this, I wanted to learn more about ways that it can be used in the elementary classroom. The article I read,  HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking  by Lisa Zawilinski (2009), describes a model that was proven effective in a fifth-grade classroom. HOT blogging gives students an online forum to: 

• voice their opinions
• do research 
• see what others are thinking
• learn to gather information
• critically evaluate it
• write about it
• read other student’s opinions
• synthesize all of the different pieces together

In the process, they learned about the value in hearing other students’ ideas as well as the importance of supporting their own thoughts with evidence so that they could get their point across. With such positive outcomes, this article should definitely impact the way technology is used in the classroom. It leaves very little question about whether or not it should be implemented. There are questions of privacy, confidentiality, and maintenance, but Zawilinski explains that many of these issues can be taken care of by changing settings during the blog creation phase and by modeling the process for students every step of the way. She mentions a site called  Edublogs  (edublogs.org),  which is just one of the many free blog sites that an educator can use to implement this practice of HOT blogging in the classroom (Zawilinski, 2009). 

I could simply stop at the training I receive here at Rockhurst, but I would be doing a grave injustice to my future students. If a teacher is unwilling to take a risk in learning about new technological tools, their students will be unwilling to take a risk in learning about them too. Likewise, if a teacher uses technology in ineffective ways, students will see no benefit to use them in the future. 

It is my job to show my students the benefit in continuous learning and to lead them and my colleagues in a direction that promotes both growth and effective use in the area of technology. 

For those of you who are still skeptical about how it can help students....

Carolyn Lynch, 4th grade teacher and RU graduate student further explains her research findings:

 The idea of blogging is somewhat uncomfortable  to educators, especially when the word “student” is thrown into the mix. Student blogging can seem like an incredibly scary thing to conquer, especially for me. Blogging is a difficult concept to understand and it’s hard to know whether students really get significant meaning out of the time spent writing and publishing on a blog. However, some teachers are taking the leap with their students and finding that student blogging is beneficial to students as writers. 

This is just the information I wanted to find when I chose to research blogging in the classroom, as blogging takes technology use to another level. Students can blog on laptops, desktops, iPads, etc. Blogs are very mobile and very easy to make. In fact, I made a blog in about ten minutes. Blogs are not very time consuming, but very beneficial to students’ learning. Blogging pushes them to use higher order thinking and creates audience-aware authors (Davis & McGrail, 2011). Both of these skills are invaluable when it comes to a lifetime for our students. 

Blogging has also proven to be a good writing tool within elementary aged students, so this will impact technology use within the classroom. Students benefit from blogging by becoming more aware of their audiences through writing. Blogging also makes it easier for students to spend time on the writing process. They are able to proof read others’ work and make adjustments to their own work.  This greatly improves their writing process over time. Blogging creates good habits and makes it attainable to proof read and revise work. To further reinforce this subject, blogging research shows that blogging is something we should be incorporating within our classrooms to help our students grow more than they already are.

As a teacher trying to develop life long skills in my students, I will incorporate blogging in to my classroom. Using blogging will encourage my students to try new things, as I will also be new to this process. However, incorporating this into my classroom will not only help them. It will also help me to become a better teacher by pushing myself and constantly growing. This personal growth will then transfer to my students. 

By trying something innovative, I will set a tone of learning and technology use within my school. 

Ed 4030/6030 RU students (and anyone else who would like to share their thoughts):

      1.     These articles covered many benefits about blogging in the classroom. Can you think of any potential issues that might arise in the creation, maintenance, and/or implementation of classroom blogging?

2.     Is blogging something you might want to implement/use within your classroom now? Why or why not?

    Answer these questions below in a comment, please.

Works Cited:

Edublogs (2014).   The world's most popular education blogging service.   Retrieved from http://  edublogs.org/ 

McGrail, E & Davis, A.  (2011).The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing.  Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 25 (4), 415-437.

Zawilinski, L. (2009). Hot blogging: a framework for blogging to promote higher order thinking.   Reading Teacher 62 (8). Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b03a28aa-6578-417d-a36b-0dfd77cc948b%40sessionmgr4002&vid=3&hid=4106 

Special thanks to Caroline and Ashley, my insightful students and guest bloggers.

 "....doesn't matter what sex you are, where you are from...don't let anyone hold you back, don't let anyone stop you." Alicia Keys

Let's encourage kids to channel their talents in a positive way. Blogging can be one of those ways. Listen to Alicia Keys sing live setting your life on fire.  Love her passion!