What is "blogging"?
What is blogging?
Blogging, defined by Dictionary.com, is:
v. to maintain or add new entries to a blog
v. to express or write about on a blog
So what is a blog? I am so confused!
A blog, defined by Dictionary.com is:
n. a website containing a writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites
What does this all mean for my classroom? Can I use a Blog to engage my students in learning?
Absolutely! Students will become active learners as the engage in content creation, communication and collaboration.
Why start a classroom blog?
There are many reasons to use a blog in your classroom:
- Communicate with students (and parents)
- It is a great tool for discussing ideas and concepts related to your curriculum
- Students create content, writing in their voice while sharing opinions/ ideas. Hold them accountable in a less stress environment!
- Teach students the value of 21st century communication skills: writing and designing a post that includes text, images and even video to effectively and creatively communicate ideas is essential to be career and college ready
- By communicating and collaborating with others on a blog, students will think deeper about the subject you teach. Let them become experts!
- Hopefully, students will see the connection between subjects as they engage in reading and writing across all areas
Things to think about...
Beyond reading and writing, blogs can be used in any subject area! Be sure your blog has purpose. For example, target a specific topic or just get students comfortable with how to provide feedback on other's work. Some examples:
- Language Arts:
- Ask students to respond to a question or prompt
- A blog can be used for class journaling
- Pre-writing
- Students struggling with the themes in a piece of literature? Assign them characters, settings or events to write posts about
- Post Book Reviews
- Math:
- Create a class HW help blog. Students can post and respond to questions about coursework
- Ask students to solve a problem of the day, upload an image and written description of the solution
- Have students post examples of geometry and other math concepts in our everyday lives
- Foreign Language:
- Ask students to respond to a prompt using French, German, Spanish or Latin.
- How about acting out a skit in a foreign language and posting it in the blog?
- Visual Arts:
- Students can post and reflect on pictures of their own artwork
- students can analyze and comment on work of other artists
- Science:
- Have students post lab procedures, data, and conclusion
- Before a class experiment, have students record their hypotheses
- Create a weather log. Include images and video