Teachers' Home Page
Post It & Forget About It
Why Students Should Blog
Educational Blogging
Table of Contents
What Is a Blog?
Wikipedia defines a blog as, “A weblog (usually shortened to blog, but occasionally spelled web log or weblog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles, most often in reverse chronological order.” Blogging is the posting of journal-like pages to a website. While these pages can contain photos or media, they are primarily focused on the easy ability to post written thoughts to a website. The postings are organized chronologically. Typically, a blog “post” can be “commented” on by others, allowing for a dialogue on a the topic of the post. Teachers and educators have used blogs to allow for what is commonly called “peer review,” meaning that students can post writings or assignments to the web, and other students can respond or encourage through the comment feature. In a broader and more educational system, blogs are about communicating. You observe your experience, reflect on it, and then write about it. Other people read your reflections, respond from their perspectives by commenting or writing their own blog article. You read their perspectives, often learn something through their eyes, and write some more.
- Blogging is about reading and writing.
- Literacy is about reading and writing.
- Blogging is about literacy. (dfw)
Educational Blogging
Educational Blogging is blogging by students, teachers, administrators, industry experts, and other involved entities that focus primarily on the educational process and educational interests.
This Website
In the context of this website, we will focus primarily on the use of blogging as an educational tool that teachers introduce to their students, then use as a means of promoting learning. One of the great educational benefits of the read/write web, and blogging particularly, is the opportunity for the student to become a “teacher” by presenting material to an audience. When we teach, we learn.
Uses for Blogging in Education
Teacher Communication
Teachers will often start a blog for providing communication to students, parents, or other teachers. Sometimes this is just the posting of homework or other assignments in one easy-to-find location. Other times this can be a richer description of the things taking place in the classroom, specifically drawing the parents into what their children are working on, or for students who have been absent. This type of blog can also take advantage of the comment feature for students and parents to ask questions or for clarification, where the answer would be of interest to all the readers.
Dialogue Generation
A teacher blog that posts questions about current subject matter can be a great way to introduce students to responding in writing and contributing collaboratively. For instance, a teacher might ask specific thought-provoking questions about a book the class is reading, and ask for students to respond through the comments feature with their ideas. This is often done as a voluntary exercise to help demonstrate the uses of blogs in easy steps.
Student Blogs
The providing of each student with an individual blog seems to generate the most significant enthusiasm for blogging among students. Whether done through special programs that allow strict teacher control and filtering on the blog posts and comments, or through public services with parent and teacher oversight, students with individual blogs have an opportunity to discover the work and joy of communicating their ideas in written form, and then getting feedback from others. Sometimes the blogs are not made public, and the feedback is just from classmates or specifically-allowed individuals; other times, and more often with older students, the feedback can come from the wider audience of the World Wide Web. Most often public student blogs are done under a nickname and without any personal details, so that the incredible excitement that can come from communicating with a global audience does not place the student in harm’s way. Student blogging has to be overseen with coaching and training to make sure that both that personal data is not communicated and that blog posts are appropriate.
Teacher Blogs
Teachers can blog for each other about their experiences teaching, their philosophies, and their methodologies.
What blogging does for students
Helps them find a voice
Another benefit to educational blogging (and wiki-writing) is the opportunity for the student to find a personal “voice” and to develop individual interests. Much like journal-writing, blogging gives wings to ideas that otherwise may can stay trapped in the mind. Many individuals find that blog-writing changes their lives in a significant way by allowing them to express their ideas in a medium that appears to have life and longevity–and that might find a kindred audience.
Creates enthusiasm for writing and communications
It is not expected that all students will take to blogging (just as not all students enjoy writing), but it is believed that blogging has a unique ability to create enthusiasm for writing and the communication of ideas.
Engages students in conversation and learning
Educational Blogging is more than just being about writing, just like writing is more than just writing business correspondence or a lab report for Chemistry class.Unlike traditional forms of publication that are one-way, when the work is done at the end of the publication process, students can be engaged in ongoing conversations about their ideas and thoughts. This can be threatening for some administrators afraid of endangering children, yet, it brings a reality to the classroom that was not previously possible.
Provides an opportunity to teach about responsible journalism
Because students who are posting blogs reach an audience with their posts, whereas a personal diary can be kept private, students have the opportunity in blogging to learn about the power of the published word. Whereas they might be tempted to criticise or make fun of someone in private conversation or in a diary, they can be taught about responsible journalism, and that the consequences of these kinds of remarks in the new world of the read/write web can be serious and long-lasting.
Empowers students
Student blogging is incredibly empowering in the following ways: 1) Instead of writing as a mechanized approach to empowerment where we learn to write well enough for school and work, we learn to write for life-long learning purposes. 2) Writing and blogging and life are intertwined as difficult issues are exposed and dealt with in a transparent community of voices. Although this type of writing entails risk and trust, growth and teamwork naturally result. 3) Writing and blogging encourage students’ initiative to write, to be engaged at more than just the head level. It involves writing from head and heart. Children often have not learned to do more than live from the heart, while adults have concentrated their efforts on more cerebral approaches. This means adults and children can bridge the gap that exists by writing together, creating a community of writers in their classrooms where there is no pseudo-community, only community where humans write.
http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging
20 reasons why students should blog
Blogging is such powerful learning material and students should blog.
Why?………………………Here are just 20 reasons
This post has been written as a draft for a few days, but I wish to publish it now, in support of @alupton and his wonderful minilegends. (They have been asked to remove their blog by their education department)
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It is FUN! Fun!….. I hear your sceptical exclamation!! However, it is wonderful when students think they are having so much fun, they forget that they are actually learning. A favourite comment on one of my blog posts is: It’s great when kids get so caught up in things they forget they’re even learning…
by jodhiay -
authentic audience – no longer working for a teacher who checks and evalutes work but a potential global audience.
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Suits all learning styles – special ed (this student attends special school 3days per weeek, our school 2 days per week, gifted ed, visual students, multi-literacies plus ‘normal‘ students.
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Increased motivation for writing – all students are happy to write and complete aspects of the post topic. Many will add to it in their own time.
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Increased motivation for reading – my students will happily spend a lot of time browsing through fellow student posts and their global counterparts. Many have linked their friends onto their blogroll for quick access. Many make comments, albeit often in their own sms language.
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Improved confidence levels – a lot of this comes through comments and global dots on their cluster maps. Students can share their strengths and upload areas of interest or units of work eg personal digital photography, their pets, hobbies etc Staff are given an often rare insight into what some students are good at. We find talents that were otherwise unknown and it allows us to work on those strengths. It allows staff to often gain insight to how students are feeling and thinking.
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Pride in their work – My experience is that students want their blogs to look good in both terms of presentation and content. (Sample of a year 10 boy’s work)
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Blogs allow text, multimedia, widgets, audio and images – all items that digital natives want to use
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Increased proofreading and validation skills
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Improved awareness of possible dangers that may confront them in the real world, whilst in a sheltered classroom environment
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Ability to share – part of the conceptual revolution that we are entering. They can share with each other, staff, their parents, the community, and the globe.
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Mutual learning between students and staff and students.
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Parents with internet access can view their child’s work and writings – an important element in the parent partnership with the classroom. Grandparents from England have made comments on student posts. Parents have ‘adopted’ students who do not have internet access and ensured they have comments.
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Blogs may be used for digital portfolios and all the benefits this entails
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Work is permanently stored, easily accessed and valuable comparisons can be made over time for assessment and evaluation purposes
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Students are digital natives - blogging is a natural element of this.
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Gives students a chance to show responsibility and trustworthiness and engenders independence.
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Prepares students for digital citizenship as they learn cybersafety and netiquette
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Fosters peer to peer mentoring. Students are happy to share, learn from and teach their peers (and this, often not their usual social groups)
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Allows student led professional development and one more……
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Students set the topics for posts – leads to deeper thinking activities
This is surely powerful learning!!
Since this post was written, students have been asked to give their reasons why they should blog and here is a year 9 girl’s answer.
Some further posts that might be of interest
- What I need to teach students in order to blog!
- Keeping Students Cybersafe - the first and most important lesson
http://murcha.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/20-reasons-why-students-should-blog/
