Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Educational Benefits of Blogs

I was beginning to wonder more about uses for blogs in the classroom. There are many ways of going about blogging in an elementary school. Each student could have their own blog (this would give them a sense of ownership) or there could be a classroom blog (this could create a sense of community). Overall I believe students would be very excited to participate in a classroom blog. If a student has a question in class that the teacher can’t answer right away, the teacher could update the blog with the answer, or good references for the student to use to find out for themselves. Or perhaps even the student with the original question could go home, research it (if they have internet/computer access) and post the answer on the blog. Teachers could use blogs to communicate their lesson plans or ideas. It can be used for the class website as well. This website (Blogs in the Classroom) gave some examples of why blogs can be useful in the classroom.

Some examples from this site include:

  • Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
  • Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
  • Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
  • Powerful tools to enable scaffolded learning or mentoring to occur.

Blogs in the classroom can also help with:

  • Discussions- A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to be reactive to one another and reflective. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.
  • Student Portfolios- Blogs present, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, as students realize their efforts will be published, they are typically more motivated to produce better writing. Teachers and peers may conference with a student individually on a developing work, and expert or peer mentoring advice can be easily kept for future reference.

This site might also be helpful to educators:
Educational Blogs

5 comments:

Anne said...

Alanna,
I've never thought about using Blogs to form student portfolios. I have always been more of a paper and pencil gal, but now I see that you can show a piece of artwork and never get finger prints on it, and other things like that which can actually preserve a student's work. That is really cool~! Thanks for the great idea!
Maybe I can learn how to do that with a class!
Anne

Janet said...

Thank you for sharing the website and your ideas about the usefulness of blogs in education. I have found that there are many students who will write their questions to me and other students but will be uncomfortable asking them aloud in class. Adding this component, an alternate way for students to comment, seems to allow for more diverse student participation in discussions.

Gwinyeo Kwak said...

Thank you for sharing useful information. Especially, I like the idea using portfolio on blog. It's been helpful for me.

Gwinyeo Kwak said...

Thank you for sharing all the information. I like the idea that we can use student's portfolio on blog. It's been helpful for me.

Nancy said...

Alana,
You gave some real concrete ways to use blogs. You will have to talk with your tech folks about being able to use them in school.
Hint, always have a treat for when you talk to these folks, it can really help:)
Nancy