How can blogs help students and teachers? What are some of your thoughts and ideas?Download Video: Posted by rachelboyd at TeacherTube.com.
Because Writing Matters...
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Exploring writing in an electronic age
How can blogs help students and teachers? What are some of your thoughts and ideas?Download Video: Posted by rachelboyd at TeacherTube.com.
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The possibilities of how to use blogging in my classroom seem to be endless! I’m excited to see how I will be able to take advantage of this amazing tool with my students. I can just imagine how involved and engaged they will become when technology is incorperated into everyday tasks, such as SSR and journal writing. I’m also excited about using edublog to share with other educators. Often times, teaching can become an isolated profession and I become eager to communicate with adults. I hope that this blog will feed this need for contact with other educators who may be experiencing the same challenges and successes that I am.
I am really looking forward to my first assignment for the children. I teach fourth grade, and my kids are not (yet) bored by the summer traditional essay. I usually have a first writing assignment to be able to judge where the kid is at and how much help he is going to need. Anyway, I like to have the children write on there best or worst day of vacation (always give a choice).
I am thinking of adding a picture to that– having the children go to Paint and make pictures of their vacation as a follow-up. I noticed that some of the templates available in edublogs allowed for thumbnail pictures. We will draw the pictures of the vacations and attach them (hopefully) to the comments made.
What do you teachers think?
This year we will start blogging! When you blog, you will respond to questions or comments that I assign or you may write a response to a book you are reading. You may respond to my blog or another student’s blog or both. This will require a commitment for you to keep up with assignments but also you will find that blogging can be an interesting way to enjoy reading and writing. Happy Blogging!
Yesterday, we discussed the idea that so much about communication and interaction for our students has changed and is continually changing. Ipods, instant messaging, blogging, myspace accounts…our technology reflects the advances that we continue to embrace and achieve as a society. As educators we have a choice, we can try to fight against these advances in our classroom, or we can accept that like everything in this life, change is inevitable. It is time to ask some very important questions.
How can we introduce and use blogging in our classrooms?
How can we incorporate this interactive, reading/writing/thinking environment to create a high-level thinking lessons and activities for our students?
So far this blogging thing is really exciting and seems to be in the proper path for the 21st century student. I think that this really presents a fun and interactive way of learning that is different from the norm, which is something we need more of. I also think that this gives us the oppurtunity to involve parents and change normal classroom discussions into family discussions. I would love to see blog assignments welcome and promote families to talk about issues and ideas, and this be reflected in their postings.
i think that blogging will be a good activity for our class to ‘write notes.’ i can blog to reflect on the day. students can, too. and they can write questions: maybe other students will have the same comments and/or concerns?.! for some students typing is faster and easier than pencil/paper.?!
I’m very excited about a new tool I learned over the summer, a new type of communication with my students! No, its not new to you students, but it is for me. Blogging is another way of increasing communication, from teacher to student, as welll as, student to teacher.
First question: What did you do over the summer that really intrigued you. The word intrigue means, to excite, interest, something you learned about yourself.
Please write this out on a page or more. Include the 5W’s: who, what, when, why, & where. The 5W’s help to add details in your writing. The 5W’s help your reader to visualize what you are describing as he/she reads it.
Email was designed to be convenient and save us time. Why then do we complain about the amount of emails we get or the amount of time it takes to “check” the email and reply? I have no doubt that in many ways it has made my life easier, but are there draw backs? Of course there are. I am slightly concerned about how quickly we get swept away with the “latest and greatest” that slowly begin to take over our lives. This blogging thing sounds like a lot of fun and I look forward to using it in class, but…I don’t want to spend my time at home checking/grading/approving blogs after spending an hour checking my email! Sure, this may help the kids, but will it hurt the teachers?
Hi Gail,
I have known about Blogs for years and didn’t like them. I don’t like to write. However, The last 2 days have changed my mind in a MAJOR way. Thanks! Here is my first entry:
Summer Reading
Published by mrbranaman under Uncategorized Edit This
The first Blog of the year will be to share the names of the books read this summer. Please include a reason why you choose each book. What was the favorite book you read?
The site is @ http://mrbranaman.edublogs.org/
Thanks Again
Glenn
Blogging is a communication medium that my students are very comfortable with already, its a way of bridging down to them. I’m hoping that this communication medium is respected and not treated as a potty-mouth place.
I am hoping to gain some advice. I teach English at a small private college in Sacramento, CA. I had instituted the use of blogs as a way to do peer review. I had an instance where a student plagarized a blog from another student. Since that instance my administration has prohibited the use of blogs. Blogs are a valuable teaching tool that I had much success with. Does anyone have any suggestions or strategies for convincing administrators of the value of this tool?