Blog Reflection - Week of December 3rd

I’ve recently found a new interest. Although it does include reading, it is a step away from biographies and fictional narratives. After mulling over which Web 2.0 tool to integrate into my class this spring for weeks, I have finally settled on one: blogs. Classroom blogging seems to be the most user-friendly Web 2.0 tool, and once I teach my students the basics, I can begin to show them how to use some of the other Web 2.0 tools that can utilize blogs, for example, podcasts, RSS feeders, etc.

Blogs are certainly a learning tool that offers students ways of expressing themselves in public, yet potentially private, spaces, and I think students will really enjoy the publishing aspect of the tool. By having students post their work in a public domain, they are enabling more of their peers to read the writings. As I begin to think about how to best incorporate this tool in the English classroom, I imagine I will have students post smaller assignments as opposed to five paragraph essays. In addition, students will be required to read the posts of their peers and make constructive comments. While I do not foresee this exchange becoming an editing workshop, I believe feedback at any level is better than no feedback. Finally, using a strong RSS reader, like Google Reader, I will be able to track the work of and interaction between my students.

Professional edublogger Will Richardson seems to suggest classroom blogs can help prepare students with the appropriate literacies to enter the job markets of the future. I believe classroom blogging has the potential to engage students on multiple levels. For the low-achieving students, they may only wish to add text or, perhaps, the freedom to add pictures and video will spark interests and enable them to excel. For the high-achieving students, the potential of blogs as far as layout, add-ons, and input feeds are seemingly limitless. Blogs can be as simple or intricate as the author wants.

For further readings about the capabilities of blogs in educational settings, I would recommend the books of Will Richardson, Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms, and David Warlick, Classroom blogging. I am currently reading both, and I find each of them incredible helpful as I begin to frame how I see blogs operating in my classroom. I would also recommend subscribing to their blogs.

Before I leave today, I want to dispel a common misconception about using the Web as an educational tool and how it relates to blogs. Parents are often worried about whether their children are in danger when they use the Internet because most parents associate the Internet with online predators, but Blogger has security settings in order prevent this type of abuse; in fact, you can set up one classroom blog with multiple authors and treat the blog more like a wiki in order to have less data to manage. Also, sometimes educators worry about anonymous peer-to-peer bullying, but Blogger has additional proactive steps to prevent this as well in the settings.

The only thing I can ask of my colleagues is to give classroom blogging a chance – experiment with it.

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Image Citation:

Helmond, A. (2007). Google and Blogger, please stop localizing me! Retrieved December 6, 2007 from http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp02/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/blogger01.png