Sunday, February 5, 2017

Blogging in the Classroom: Is it a Game Changer?

Open reflection, collaboration, peer interaction, developing literacy and writing skills, giving students a route to finding their own voice are just a few reasons why student blogging is important. Anytime students are held accountable through an open medium like blogging their focus and mindset changes. Providing opportunities where they feel safe to express their opinions helps students create a positive social media footprint, it teachers them responsibility and self-moderation. It also gives those students who are quiet in class a platform where they feel comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions.

I think the best thing for me as a teacher is to have an archive of learning. I go back and reread my own blog posts and it is astonishing how much I have changed and grown throughout the year. For students it is the same realization. What they may have believed in January may be altered and more suited for them in August. By having an open archive both of us can go back and notice trends and areas where more attention is needed. I have struggled this year getting a class blog off the ground. My focus was on my own. I tried different platforms never liking them because they were difficult to edit or access. But I found one and it was right under my nose the whole time.

Canvas is the online tool my district uses for students to access all their class material, see a calendar of all their upcoming assignments in all their classes in one place. A unity of curriculum. I use it a lot already: quizzes, test reviews, weekly discussion questions, notes, now I have another way to incorporate it in my classroom: blogs. This last Thursday I assigned the first blog post. It came out great. It was a directed post-not open ended in order to make sure they had access, understood the format, and made it stream-lined. Every student replied to my question and then replied to at least one other person- this created a great stream of posts for each level to read. I have three groups in Canvas: Academic, PreAp, and GT, this made the GT stream huge with a lot of comments about 120 students to be exact. So it was lengthy. This I may change by breaking up my GT classes (4) into smaller classes. But maybe not I do like the huge thread.

There was also recently added a podcasting ability. So I asked my students to try and send a podcast if they were interested. I saw on the thread about 25 podcasts. So now I know it works and this will be our platform for those too. Then I will take the best ones and add them to our You Tube channel. I am excited to take this further. Blogging is so important because it connects my classes together, builds a community, and provides every student a voice, a place to share ideas, and a feeling of unity with their peers.

Is blogging a game changer? I believe it is, because it is personal, reflective, and collaborative at the same time. Students have ownership of their responses and can also read other perspectives and get a great sense of the community through written and spoken word. I am just a little bummed I didn't take the leap earlier. But sometimes we need to take a chance to hold on and let other things take precedence. Other things come first. But all lead to the same place, student learning, growth and acceptance.





No comments:

Post a Comment

#OneWord2023- Plant

Humus, soil, Earth- the substance that brings fertility and nourishment. Home to decomposers, revitalizers and care-givers. The foundation f...