Great ways to use blogs in the classroom • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
To have students respond to ideas or content raised in class To create a portfolio of their thinking over time To post prompts for critical thinking or journaling To post examples of good student work and encourage and motivate students To provide links to online news items or articles to have students read, think, , engage, write and react. To gather and organize internet resources for a specific topic To post photos related to a subject or topic and comment on why that photo connects – use photos as metaphor, as illustration, as thought provoking, etc To post a discussion topic for homework and assign students at least one response to class topic and one response to another student’s comments To post deadlines or project goal targets and have students update you on their progress and percentage of tasks completed or achieved To get student reactions to thought-provoking questions To post journal entries To summarize what they most interesting about a particular unit or topic of study To engage other student voices than simply the ones raised in class To really explore what they think themselves and why they think it – in other words, to make thinking visible.
Source: Education for Justice
Reasons to consider blogging in the classroom: 1. It gives your students an authentic purpose to write. The idea that their stories will be published online for the world to see may motivate them to do their best. 2. Students have a real goal in sight when using the writing process. Not everything needs to be revised, edited, and published, but because this work will be on public display, there’s greater incentive to polish the work. 3. It allows your students to share their work with family members around the world. (And if the student work is translated into their first language, it allows dear old grandma who lives overseas and doesn’t speak English the opportunity to celebrate in your students’ success.) 4. It provides a way to create and explore media texts as a natural extension of the writing process. Instead of just publishing your good copies on your school bulletin board, why not publish your good copies online. Your students may even get feedback and comments from people in cyberspace. 5. It introduces your students to a new genre and form. Blog posts typically use short sentences and short paragraphs to pre-digest the content in this channelchanging world.
6. It may inspire some of your student to blog themselves and encourage them to see themselves as writers. Source: http://blog.classroomteacher.ca/4/6-reasons-to-get-your-students-blogging/
19 ways to use a pupil blog 1. Lesson summaries at the end of each lesson 2. Summarize a concept and write a post about it 3. Post up a question (in the “I’ve got a question” category) to be picked up by other pupils. 4. Post up finished work, to be commented on 5. Posting up quizzes, for others to answer in comments 6. Post up a list of links to web sites related to the current topic 7. Photo blog today’s work 8. Pick two other pupils in the class and ask them a question (the other pupils will have to find this through the aggregation) 9. Keep a progress diary during a project 10. Post up an audio summary (or podcast) 11. Post up a list of topics to revise at home 12. Write study notes into your blog for each subject (using categories to split them up) 13. Keep a record of the running of a club, enterprise group or sports league 14. Use a blog to count down to exams, doing a bit of work online each day. Use your blog as a study monitor, recording the time online, studying, watching tv, going out, each night. 15. Write an entry every day about “what I learned” - one thing you remember from each subject 16. Use your blog to measure healthy study-friendly activity such as sports, healthy eating etc. 17. Use blog entries to show parents, friends and family what you did today. 18. Assess yourself on the last unit of work by checking your knowledge against a checklist, and ask your teacher to comment on your progress 19. Be positive and write about the best thing that happened today.
“Seven Activities to do with Your Class Blog:” 1. Post a homework question a. Each student writes a one-paragraph response. b. Read a few before class to see what your students think about the reading. c. You can require students to respond not only to the reading, but to each other’s responses as well. 2. Start a discussion
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a. Pose a question and require that students post at least three contributions to a discussion over the course of a week, or more contributions over the course of a unit. Invite outsiders to comment on student work a. If you know the author of a book you are reading, have students write feedback and have the author respond. b. Have students or teachers from another school comment on your students’ work. Have students post discussion questions for tomorrow’s class a. This is great when you know you won’t have time to plan. b. If you know that you’ve flubbed a class and students are confused, have them post questions about things they don’t understand. Have students post their notes for the day a. Assign one student per day to be the scribe for the class. This is great for discussion-based classes where you want students to focus on the discussion and not have to worry about taking notes. Post progress reports on team projects a. Students can post their work to the blog so that others can see what they are doing. They can also comment on each other’s work. b. If faculties are trying to work as a team or core group, use a blog to communicate with each other about lessons, etc. Have students create their own blogs for any independent study a. Have students post an outline of their week’s work before our weekly meeting.
Source: EmergingEdTech
Ways to use weblogs in education You might like to create a reflective, journal type blog to… • reflect on your teaching experiences. • keep a log of teacher-training experiences. • write a description of a specific teaching unit. • describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn’t work. • provide some teaching tips for other teachers. • write about something you learned from another teacher. • explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes. • share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom. • provide some how-to’s on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class. • explore important teaching and learning issues. You might like to start a class blog to… • post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments and other pertinent class information. • post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work. • communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students.
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post prompts for writing. provide examples of class work, vocabulary activities, or grammar games. provide online readings for your students to read and react to. gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them. post photos and comment on class activities. invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice. publish examples of good student writing done in class. show case student art, poetry, and creative stories. create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning. create a literature circle. create an online book club. make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills. ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions and written work. post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students. build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take. link your class with another class somewhere else in the world
You can encourage your students (either on your weblog using the comments feature or on their own weblogs) to blog… • their reactions to thought-provoking questions. • their reactions to photos you post. • journal entries. • results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit. • their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class. You can have your students create their own weblogs to… • learn how to blog • complete class writing assignments. • create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing. • express their opinions on topics you are studying in class. • write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest. • discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them (You, the teacher, can learn a lot this way!). • write about class topics, using newly-learned vocabulary words and idioms. • showcase their best writing pieces. Source: http://anne.teachesme.com/2004/10/05/
Created by: Kristie Johnson Last Updated: February 15, 2010