How do you think blogs can be used in the media center and/or the K-12 classroom?
As stated in the article by John Sener, In Search of Student-Generated Content in Online Education , "Student-generated content has also long been an integral part of the educational process. " Three main improvements that online this article proposes are:
- Increased Student Engagement
- Improved Learning Effectiveness
- Create Projects with Lasting Value - for other students, the community at large, or the student themselves
OK, now that I believe we should blog, I need ideas about how to go about it with kids. I ran across a great blog post in Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech by Dean Shareski with suggestions for successful teacher and student blogs. He suggests:
- Be a reader - Read other blogs before starting. Read more blogs than you create.
- To get people to comment on your blog, comment on theirs!
- Make it personal- write about what you know (nice tie in to the storytelling movement in presentations!)
- Use Hyperlinks
- It's not all text - use graphics (including pod/vodcasts!)
All really good ideas! Since diving into blogs, I've tried to pay attention to what grabs my attention, and these five tips really show up.
So, how can I use a blog with my students/staff? There are so many ideas!
Collaboratation on projects
Publication of student/staff work
Student Book Reviews
Book Talks/Popular Checkouts/New books/Featured books
Staff Development
Concept presentation and discussion
Library News
And more! The more I look around at other library blogs, the more ideas I get. I'm getting more confident and am ready to start my own at my school and get some of my older students blogging, too.
Oh, one other thing, safety concerns are always prevelant when students are publishing to the Web. We require students and families to sign AUP statements for using technology equipment at school. A similar for could be used for Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs. One I found gives a framework from which to start.
image from Flickr:Creative Commons, posted by robinhamman
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4 comments:
Linda,
Nice job on relaying the information on blogging. I am a novice to all of this. You I can see are not.
I currently teach middle school science and am going to have the students blog with a group project on famous scientists. I'll see how it goes. A little collaborative project for the kids. I'll keep you posted.
Barry
Wonderful job on this Linda! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
I teach for Florida Virtual School, so my life as a teacher is completely virtual and on the telephone making monthly calls and giving oral assessments. I do have blogs on my education page and students freely voice their opinions about various assignments and I know it helps them vent or state how much they liked a certain assignment. It is a safe environment and we have an integrity policy at our school and students have always been respectful of this policy. Once again, it is all about how it is introduced and implemented. It helps me as their teacher to be aware of their problem areas and students enjoy blogging with other students because there is a connection, they are all aware that everyone struggles from time to time. It is a great feeling to know e are all human, we all face problems and yet together, students help one another.
Hi Linda,
I must say you seem much more knowledgable about blogging then I am. I think the information you've found is great and it's nice to hear how useful you've found blogging to be. I definetly agree with you that introducing blogging to students is a great idea as long as it's done safely. I'm wondering if you've started any projects or have any ideas you're thinking of using with your students?
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