When blogging first hit my radar, I thought of it in two ways: (1) a great place to easily set up a public place to post my lesson plans for the week and attach documents and links for students to access, and (2) an online diary for people to write about what they felt we all needed to know about them but we really didn't need to know. As blogging has progressed and developed, it has turned into much more than either of those concepts. Using it as an online teacher in-service, a resource hot spot, or a place to discuss and debate changes and needs of modern classrooms are all helpful ways to build blogging into a teacher's tool kit.
How have I used it in my classroom? I am just introducing blogging to my high school students. Many of them are doing it without realizing through their social media networks, but showing them a more academic tone and tenor is my goal.
My English 9 students have started reading Sandra Cisnero's House on Mango Street. As part of a writing intensive unit where students use journaling as a way to write their own vignettes modeled after Cisnero's work, class begins with a journal response and ends with a reflection. Students are to periodically post their favorite responses onto our school's Blackboard site. This is a semi-private network where only students of my class can see the postings, so teaching students digital etiquette and monitoring what they post before it enters the large web-o-sphere is possible. Their first assignment to post is "What is home?" Using imagery and examples, they came up with their own definitions and then had the opportunity to comment on each other's posts.
By the end of the unit, I am hoping that students are comfortable enough to try to start their own blogs. Important safety issues I will discuss will be to not use personal identifiers for themselves or others, how to adjust privacy settings on their blogs, and knowing how to report problems with their blogs in areas of content or misuse. Students can use blogs as a form of an online portfolio to document their high school years, as a form of collaboration, and as a form of personal expression.
The next step will be to teach them about RSS feeders to capture the blog responses and add other sources to a list that they can access in one place instead of spending hours surfing the web, hours spent better by doing my homework.
As a fellow high school English teacher, I first want to start out by saying that your journaling activity for House on Mango Street sounds engaging and meaningful. I’m sure your students are enjoying it. It also sounds like a fitting transition into using blogging in the classroom. By having your students submit their assignments via blogs, you provided them with an opportunity view and comment on each other’s’ work. As an English teacher, you know that old school peer review in the classroom, while still vital, can often be difficult and time consuming. By having your students, blog you are providing a venue in which they can peer critique efficiently.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, after this lesson will you make your students create their own personal blog for a grades assignment, or just encourage them to make one? How are you prepared to teach them internet safety? There are internet safety websites you can use that have video clips, facts, and statistics to help you. Your school's TRT should be a good source of information for this. Also, if you are suggesting the students create a blog as a portfolio, maybe you can vertically collaborate with other English teachers and have them create blog assignments when your students reach their classrooms. Best of luck! Sounds like a lot of interactive learning is in store for your students!
Thanks for the comment and advice! I would love to have the links that you use for internet safety. Vertical collaboration with the other English teachers would be fantastic. I think doing so as an Enlglish 9 teacher would really set the bar and challenge our department to be 21st century thinkers, learners, and instructors. It would be a shame to waste what students learned in English 9 and not be able to continue applying it to their higher level courses. To answer your question as far as requiring or encouraging the blog, I think encouraging would be the direction in which I would like for this to go. I want to make sure to set my students up for success, and many of them are not ready due to resources or confidence to publish online.
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