Blogging In My Classroom (629)

As a computers teacher, I am fortunate in that my students have access to computers in class every single day. Although I currently operate a classroom website with a blogging tool, I am more familiar with blogging for personal use and the one I manage for our district that discusses our 1:1 iPad program (though the blog is in its early phases). I currently use a website for my class (through Weebly) and use the 'blog' page to posts the daily agenda. Therefore, the blog is mostly for student use, but can be helpful for parents to stay up to date with what we are working on in class. Thus far, one of the best features of this blog (and website) has been that students who are gone can quickly see what they are missing. Another great feature has been students' ability to comment on posts.  


The blog is helpful in that it allows me to create an organized list of links and assignments for the day. Because of the nature of my class, I really don't think there is anything I couldn't use the blog for! In fact, when I give assessments using Google Forms, I just embed them into my blog using html code. I've also been able to embed Prezis and any videos I've wanted students to access as I begin to 'flip' portions of my classroom.

Initially when I created my blog I did not allow students to leave comments -- largely because the comments they had first put on there were relatively irrelevant to what we were doing (i.e. 'sup?', 'i like cookies', etc). However, I now approach this differently. I give them one post on my blog where they can post any 'appropriate' comment they'd like. It's a great way to try out commenting and to help them learn exactly how to do it. Then we discuss why people would comment on a blog: to share thoughts, agree/disagree, or to point someone to new information. For the rest of the marking period, students are expected to comment in such a way that is beneficial to their classmates and myself.

Lastly, I do allow my students to create their own blogs. They begin by creating their own websites in weebly and add a blog page to use when we journal or when we have digital discussions. This is a valuable tool for me; students who are normally quiet respond in their blogs, through Edmodo discussions or in other online applications like TodaysMeet. It is awesome! I'm feeling hearing what they think! And because it's online, many of them are more likely to do to the work because they enjoy working on the computers or iPads.


One reason I may start to shy away from the blog a little bit is because I've been using Edmodo and have found that I really enjoy using that as an online tool to work with my students. They like to think of it as "Facebook for school" and I love the tools that are included in Edmodo. This is not to say that I won't use the blog and website anymore, but that I'm starting to split between the two.