I have been thinking of ways that I could use blogs either in my own classes, or with other classes by helping teachers utilize some of the benefits of blogs.
One idea I had was to integrate one program we are using that is designed to improve student writing with a blog that would allow them to publish their finished work. I really like the idea that a blog can provide an authentic audience for student writing, and that they will likely be more motivated to write better if they know that a potential large audience will see their work. Not only that, but we could encourage other students to comment on the original posts and either asks questions of the students, or provide some constructive feedback. The idea would be that once students have revised their writing into a final draft, they would publish their work on the blog for their classmates, parents, and others in the community to see and read. This would also be a great school to home connection. I teach in a middle school so the students who would be publishing their work to the blog would be in grades 6-8. Teachers could use the blog in any content area, and this would be a great way to publish student work.
A second idea I had for using blogs would be to pair up students and pose an interesting question to them that they would need to discuss and then provide a response to. This would follow the "think, pair, share" process where students first think about the question, then partner up with someone to discuss their ideas, and then they would finally post their response to the blog. The question posed to the students would need to be something that would be interesting and engaging for them, as well as a higher level question requiring critical thinking skills and not just the reporting back of facts.
I can anticipate several challenges to using blogs with a large number of students. First of all, since I teach in a middle school, I need to be careful about setting up accounts for students who could then post personal information and risk becoming a victim of an internet predator. I could use Google reader to keep tabs on student blogs, but I think that could be overwhelming if the number of students gets too large. I do think that the rewards outweigh the risks, so I intend on trying one or both of the above ideas.
I looked for any data out there that would support using blogs to improve student writing. I came up empty, except for many blogs and sites that claim it does. Has anyone know of or done a study on this, and if so, what were the results?
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I don't know of any studies that have been done on it. My guess is that it is probably to new for a study to have already been done. My suggestion is to search through Walden's library in the online journals to see if anything comes up. If not, you can always start a study. I really love your idea about doing the think pair share on the blog site. I think that is creative and students tend to be more honest when not in a face to face situation. I wonder if you could give all the students code names so they wouldn't know who is who so they might even be more honest and open. Also these code names would help keep them safe. I name the code names probably wouldn't stay secret for long among the students but it might be an interesting experiment.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this website addresses students that are in college, it does discuss how blogs can help students with writing:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.illinois.edu/ii/06/0504/blogs.html
The second website is one I found very interesting. It talks about the need for teachers to merge the various ways students communicate outside of school into how they write in school to engage them in what they are doing. I also think it is a great way to teach computer skills to students and the proper way to "write" using a computer. I would much rather a student be engaged in what they are writing about than just writing to write!
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/197711
I really like how students start using higher level thinking skills when they use blogs. Students seem to gain much more understanding and interact with their peers in a way that traditional writing cannot compare to.
I think it is smart to pair students up as well. Wouldn't it be great if you could give students a topic that had both a positive and negative side to it and they could each research and post their responses to whatever side they were on. It gives everyone a great viewpoint of both sides and provides an opportunity for students to share their thoughts with others.
Thanks for the feedback. I really think that blogs are most valuable in the fact that they provide a meaningful audience for students to write toward. The second article is interesting in noting that we need to merge the writing that students do outside of school with what they do inside. We also need to teach them how to write differently for different audiences.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog. I like the idea about posting finished work. I think sometimes posting unfinished work that students may feel vulnerable to scrutiny, but using it as a publishing tool would be a great way to showcase pieces the students are proud of.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the idea of using it as a sharing tool among students is a great way to spur communication and working together. I always encourage my students to share their point of views and this is a great vehicle to do so.
Christopher- I teach at the high school level, so I can understand that problems of having 180 blogs to check all of the time. Maybe you could put students in groups to shrink the number of blogs you have to watch over and have it be a type of cooperative learning activity.
ReplyDeleteI think that using groups to manage the blogs would be really helpful. I was thinking of having a class blog and having a discussion of the week and students would have to post and comment on that one blog that way there are not as many different blogs to keep up with. How do you feel about having multiple users on a single blog? How would you handle the situation where students don't have access to the internet?
ReplyDelete