Using blogs in the classroom

By teaching strategies for civil discourse, students will learn to participate in effective classroom discussions. Furthermore, students will be able to use such skills outside of the classroom in everyday interactions. There are many benefits to online blogging when appropriate online interactions are upheld. Some people think that kids/students should not be held down by a multitude of rules. I think that most students do well with structure, as long as they know what is expected. Therefore, clear rules and guidelines should be taught regarding online blogging. Many of the guidelines mentioned in the article are common sense. It is less obvious however, how easy a blog can be misinterpreted.

Whenever vague wording is used, ideas could be misconstrued. Students would need to be clear in their phrases and take responsibility for their comments. Another disadvantage could be possible blogging from “trolls.” One way to minimize damaging remarks made by a negative commenter, would be to create a system in which all posts had to be approved by the instructor before visible to the class. This could be time consuming, but the instructor could do their grading at the same time, and have students send their responses the following day as a separate assignment.

Another disadvantage that may present itself would be lack of computer access. If students are expected to blog as homework, there may be issues of not having a computer at home. This could be alleviated by giving students additional time to access the school computer lab, or if possible, checking out a laptop from the library for home use.

After viewing Mr. Harbeck’s classroom blog, I feel that it could be a pretty effective tool to be able to engage kids outside the classroom. By using this different strategy (in addition to classroom learning), he is essentially giving students another way to achieve success. I liked the layout of the content on the blog, and thought that the chat area could provide much needed encouragement and feedback. Having an interactive place to receive information about the curriculum (assignments, due dates, study guides, etc.) as well as the option to submit homework and evaluate peers, seems ideal and efficient. Zero trees were used in producing that page, and a syllabus could be posted, furthering its environmentally friendly format.

Although I named a number of disadvantages above, I can see benefits of using blogging in my teaching strategies. For my future Health classroom, blogging could provide a great opportunity for students to ask questions that they normally wouldn’t feel comfortable asking in class. I could also have students submit assignments through their blog. This would be great as sometimes a gym environment is not ideal for paper assignments. This would put the focus of physical activity in the gym, and any assignments to be done electronically, outside of the gym. For example, in a fitness class I could have students keeping daily logs or journals concerning their sleep and nutrition habits. By requiring students to post these logs, they might work a little harder in practicing healthy habits.