Blogging and Technology in the Classroom

I think one of the best aspects of a blog, is the fact that your students or the your community of teachers can always be connected.  You are able to post ideas, comments, and questions and receive feedback immediately no matter what time of day or where you are.  In regards to the statements above, if you give your students access to your blog, you can post homework assignments and other links that would be beneficial to their needs at the time.  For any of these assignments, the students would be able to post questions and another student or the teacher could answer them. 

I have recently experienced this as a student.  On blackboard pages you are able to post comments and questions, this was very helpful when studying for one of my finals.  I had a question that several other students had a question on.  One student posted the question, and there were several responses answering the question.  This was all at 1 in the morning.  Usually, your teacher won’t be awake at that time, but sometimes other fellow students are and are able to clarify things.

Another great feature about blogs is that they are very easy to use.  They require minimal technical knowledge and are easily created and maintained.  I borrowed this idea from a website that also stated four educational benefits that I strongly agree with.  These are:

• Highly motivating for students, especially those who 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 and mentoring to occur.

Not only have I become a recent fan of blogs, but I have also become a fan of WIKI’s.  WIKI’s are similar to blogs in that they allow teachers to post things and have students respond by posting back.    After creating both, I would use a WIKI to post assignments, rubrics, extra handouts, different resources, etc.  I would use a blog primarily to post comments about the day and what students need to do.  I would encourage them to post any questions they had on the blog so that they could get immediate feedback.  Therefore, I would use both in my classroom.  Below is a link to a WIKI page I created that could correspond to this blog.  The WIKI I have created is a rough draft of how I would use it in the classroom.  As stated before, the blog would be primarily for discussion and collaboration.  I could even see me having students discuss group projects on the blog.

WIKI page:

Ms. Simonson's WIKI

Article Reference:

Blogging in the Classroom