I read through a few articles. These articles explained what a blog was all about. They also shared some ideas on how and why blogging should be used in education. Some ideas mentioned include:
- Blogging provides students with many opportunities to read and write
- Great for collaboration
- Encourages critical and analytical thinking
- Good for brainstorming and expressing creativity
- Greater exposure to more valid information
- Helps students reflect on learning experiences
- Can be used as a digital portfolio for student work
I think that these are all very good reasons to incorporate blogging in education. The articles also mentioned that blogging is quite easy to do and can be accessed and updated from anywhere with an Internet connection! :) I honestly feel that the students will be more willing to take part in blogging because they have the freedom to work whenever and wherever they want to. Also, blogs are very easy for teachers to follow and keep track of their students' thoughts and progress. I think blogs can help excite and engage students in learning because they are familiar with the technology and concept being used. It is a great way to assess the students and I think it will to provide a more accurate representation of what the students know.
Some things that really need to be thought about however are the intentions of the students' use of blogging. One of the articles mentioned that it is very important to remind students that blogging is not for social networking. It is a great way for the students to communicate but should be only used for educational purposes. It is also extremely important to give the students guidelines to follow. They need to be taught the importance of online etiquette so that they do not develop bad habits that can get them into negative situations! I think it is very important to give the students an outline of what they are going to be using the blogs for and expectations they need to follow. It is also a good idea to share those things with parents. That way, the parents can also see what their children are up to in school. It's a win, win situation!
Here are the articles I read:
Duffy, Peter and Bruns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp. 31-38, Brisbane.
Title: Five Don'ts of Classroom Blogging. Authors: Sturgeon, Julie Source: T H E Journal; Feb2008, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p2
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47
Your comments suggest several positive ways and reasons for using in education, but your reference suggests "5 don'ts". Was it carefully incorporated in your comments?
ReplyDeleteI guess I didn't go too into depth about the negatives......I mentioned that students need to be careful not to use blogging as a social network as well as making sure that the students are guided through the expectations when blogging. It can be dangerous and the blogs can easily be misused if students are left with complete freedom. I guess I tried to turn the don'ts into more positive outlooks since as of now I am for using blogs in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteBlogs can be great for classrooms for the reasons you list in your post. I think blogs become even more important in a virtual environment such as ours in which posts and associated comments take the place of what would normally be verbal discussions in class.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of using blogs for one major assignment--but would that make sense? Would it really need to be something we did all term?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you all think?