Technology survey

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Using a blog in my classroom

In reading my course handbook for school and watching videos on blogging I have come to understand how blogging can be useful in the classroom. I am a Special Education teacher at the high school level. I teach Environmental Science to 11th and 12th graders and Physical Science to 9th and 10th graders. One way in which I teach them new information is by giving notes which they have to write down. I usually ask them at the end if they have any questions and usually they say no. What I would like to do as a blog is have each one of them rewrite what they had learned that day. I would have them write it as if they were writing to a friend. I would then check it to see if they understand the content of what was presented that day and then provide feedback to them on an individual basis. I have trouble being able to set time aside time to have one-on-one with students and I feel this would be an ideal way for us to interact. I can also use that same information to see if my students are understanding what I am teaching them or if I need to present the information in a different way.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Laura. You're definitely onto something here. Blogging is highly reflective, but you might be surprised how much the students will want to share. I would suggest in this case you set the privacy settings thoughfully. You may want to limit viewing and feedback to members of each class, or perhaps just between you and the student. The good thing is they can have multiple blogs in Google; each one serving a specific purpose. In these cases it's important to ensure the title of the blog reflects its purpose. "Jamies's Learning Journal" for example, would prevent him from accidentally posting sensitive materials he wouldn't want viewable to peers outside his learning recovery class. "Jamie's Field Trip Journal" settings on the other hand could be shared with all his classmates. Good luck :)

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  2. Thanks for the suggestion. I would definitly have something specific for them to post to and at first I would probably just have the blogging between myself and the students until they got comfortable with the idea. Eventually I would like to open it up to their other classmates.

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