In my classroom, I plan to have my students blog instead of journaling. My students have been making journaal entries in a notebook and I would take them up, read them, make comments and give them their journals back. Now I can respond and so can the entire class to each others post. I have some students in the class that are very quiet and I am hoping this will help them to express themselves better, also. this will help them interact about content. Not sure if I will showcase their work there, but it will be a place to share learning with the larger community since we discuss real world applications just about everyday in this particular class. The blog will involve more students and they will be able to give their views. there will be no right or wrong answers as well as the students will need to do their research in order to make intelligent appropriate comments. Grade level-10-12
Business Law class. The students will be talking about real world applications that will help them as they transition into society. I am excited to start this adventure.
I think that is a great idea. My experience with the quieter students has been a good one. I started with short discussion questions and I think they like not having to speak in front of the whole class. Good idea giving them a topic though. When I first read your blog, I thought my students might struggle putting their feelings out there for everyone to read, but I think they will appreciate the time to research and form their comments. High school kids will love doing this.
ReplyDeleteWe were suppose to look for any issues in each other's blogs that could be a problem but I think you already found it in dealing with the shy student. Instead of posting names, maybe students could use username to hide their identity somewhat. You could have the master list of usernames, but the students would not. Just an idea.
I think that is a good idea to use a username for the students so they will feel comfortable about writing their comments. Thank you for that suggestion I have usernames for each of my students anyway so that would work.
ReplyDeleteI also use journals in my social studies classroom. I think that you have good ideas for using blogs in your class. I think by using a blog instead of journals, it will take less time to grade their entries. I would also suggest that you have their usernames written in your grade book so you could remember who is whom when you are grading responses.
ReplyDeletei teach Algebra and calculus and we take notes but not journals. I want to use my blog site to post student projects, not sure how to insert videos or powerpoints or pictures yet. I am still learning what I can or can not do.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great way to get your students more excited about journalism. To increase participation of your shy students I also agree that using surnames would help them feel more comfortable. My concern is that it may make them feel too comfortable when commenting on classmate's posts. Is there a way you plan to monitor your students' posts? Will you be changing your blog settings so all posts must be approve by you first before they are published to the blog?
ReplyDeleteIt does take less time to grade when you can go online to look at student work. I spend about 7 hours this past week doing just that. We completed a major project in all my classes and I wanted to get them graded and back to students before midterms this Wednesday. Using a rubric and viewing online made the process better than it would have been!
ReplyDeleteIf you plan on having a work showcase, be sure to take plenty of pictures of exemplary work, or have the students do it themselves. It can be a major headace trying to find examples of great work at the last minute, so this is how I have prepared ahead in the past. Students truly enjoy seeing their great work on display.
ReplyDeleteHi Tonya,
ReplyDeleteYou describe an ideal application for blogging. The more authentic audience should result in students being more invested in their writing--and this is also a great opportunity to develop perspective taking. Students can reflect on one another's contributions.
Thanks for sharing.