Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 47) blogging Digital Discussion How to set up a blog in your classroom. by Helena Echlin Many teachers have started to experiment with blogs. For some, a blog is an electronic notebook—one students can’t lose (or claim the dog ate). For others, it’s a forum where a class discussion can unfold 24/7. Either way, blogging can be a powerful educational tool. Suggestions for setting up a classroom blog follow. (Keep in mind that these ideas assume student access to computers and the Internet.) Decide the Main Use for Your Blog Classroom management: Use a blog to post assignments, handouts, and notices. You can also put up study notes and have students take turns summarizing what happened in school that day. Learning journal: Pat Harder, a seventh-grade teacher at Henley Middle School, in Crozet, Virginia, uses individual or small-group blogs as a place for students to “write reflectively” on what they learned from a particular assignment and how they might do better next time. Online notebook: Limiting access to teacher and individual students only, you can use the blog as a way to track students’ progress. Harder found using a blog this way particularly helpful when she suspected one of her students had a learning disability. “I went to the committee that evaluates students for learning disabilities and was able to present them with a record of the sentence structure my student had used,” she explains. Class discussion: Assign blogs to small groups, or set up a single blog for the whole class. You may post entries for discussion, or have individual students and guest bloggers post entries. Decide How to Grade Work Use blogs to post homework for traditional evaluation.“An assignment might be, ‘After discussing a short story in class, post an entry on your blog, commenting either on the class discussion or the story itself,’” Glogowski says. Although he does not grade the personal entries, he adds, they “help me assess a student’s engagement and effort, which I might mention when conferencing with parents.” Set Up Your Blog(s) At one of the free bloghosting sites, such as Blogger, setting up a blog takes only a few minutes. Just follow the instructions (create an account, and choose a name and template). If you want to limit accessibility, list the email addresses of those allowed to see it. However, some schools have blocks on Internet access, so you may want to subscribe to a service such as Edublogs or Class Blogmeister, which have additional features. Protect Your Students If your classroom blog is publicly accessible, make sure students use first names only and do not provide personal identifying details. You will also have to set clear guidelines on what is appropriate regarding content and comments. Bring the Blog into the Classroom Personal expression: Give students individual blogs for posting When Glogowski’s students began blogging, their enthusiasm whatever they want. This might seem like a recipe for disas- delighted him. Then he realized that what they were writing had little to do with their curriculum. “The quester, but Konrad Glogowski, who teaches tion was, how could I help them channel that grades 7–9 at Fern Hill School, in Oakville, VIRTUAL LESSON PLAN energy into academic work?” he asks. His Ontario, Canada, and is the creator of the For a lesson plan on how to set up a blog and use it in your classroom, go to solution: Discuss the blogs in class so stuBlog of Proximal Development Web site, www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2007-BLOG dents could understand that the confidence found this format to be a huge success. and creativity they showed in their blogs had Inspired by an audience of their peers, his students posted poetry, journal entries, and reactions to articles a place in the classroom, too. they had read, as well as prolific comments on the blogs of Helena Echlin is a freelance writer in San Francisco. fellow students. SEPTEMBER 2007 EDUTOPIA 47 http://www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2007-BLOG
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.