Each semester the new group of elementary practicum students at Gustavus joins the TLC blog as authors. Welcome!
We use this blog as a place to discuss teaching and learning, share resources, and recognize each others’ contributions to our learning. (My favorite posts are the “Shout Outs’!) If you are new to blogs or want to look at a resource you might use with your students, check out the “Blogs in Plain English” video (about 2 minutes).
We’ll also use this blog to think about how teachers can create writing communities.
To get us started, has anyone in the class had experiences blogging in schools? What did you learn? What went well? What is tricky about using blogs in classrooms?
I am very interested in how blogs can be implemented with schools. I have some concerns about permitting younger elementary students from using blogs from educational purposed; however, I can see where blog could be very beneficial for older students. I think blogs would be a great way for students to discuss new topics while also improving their writing skills.
Some of the blogging platforms, like edublog, have options so that only the class can read and post to the class blog. The “members” could also include parents. This might be a nice way to introduce young writers to social media without the same level of privacy and safety concerns.
I had the same class as Jessica and so I was supposed to blog each week in World Religions adding an article about religions that caught our interest. I thought it was a really good idea, but it was difficult to find articles because of all of the requirements he had, and also it was easy to remember to do it every week!I think the idea of using blogs is really good and can be helpful to the students, but as teachers we need to find a way to make sure that every student has the ability to use the blog and post to it as well as ensuring everyone is participating. I think once you have a system down and an understanding of how it works in the classroom it can be really beneficial.
The very first time that I used a blog for a class was Spring Semester my freshman year here at Gustavus. I took a World Religions course and we had to keep a blog to summarize what we learned each week. It was a really simple assignment, but it was also easy to forget to do. I learned how to simply use a blog, but not any of the formatting or what is important to focus on. Some of the students in the course had difficulties publishing posts or adding to older ones. There were some students who regularly kept a blog and they were the ones who usually helped the rest of us who were having trouble. It was tricky for the professor to help students who were at varying levels.
I like the idea of students helping each other, but I also think that instructors can offer short mini-lessons to help everyone with the technology.
I never used a blog during elementary or secondary school, but I have seen blogs used for Spanish classes at the college level. I also was in charge of the blog for our service trip that I led at Wartburg, which was all interconnected with other blogs from other service trips. The Spanish blogs seemed to go well because students were able to write in Spanish and get experience writing without pressure in class. The students also had “published” record of their writing.
It can be tricky to use the blogs in classrooms because students may write things that are not appropriate to the topic or have inappropriate posts in general. Also, if students do not have access to the internet or a computer, they may not have the same opportunities as other students to comment or posts blogs outside of the classroom time.