Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

For part of a course I am doing, I have been asked to post an idea of how I might use a blog in my Grade Five classroom. I should note that I am a general classroom teacher with a specialty in Science, and that I also teach Information Technology to my own class.

After I have spent some time teaching the students how to respond appropriately on a blog, including reading, modelling, safety and practice as suggested by Richardson (2010, p.45-47), I would like to start using blogs for students to participate in Book Clubs. Book Clubs are part of the overall Reading Workshop espoused by the Literacy Collaborative - you can find out more about how to manage and set up "regular" book clubs from a variety of authors including Gay Su Pinell,  Isoke Titalyo Nia and Irene Fountas - and they are expecially great for getting Grade 4s and 5s talking about books. This of course will hopefully help them love books and be interested in what other people think of the books they have read.

This very exciting instructional strategy would be enhanced by using a blog because the participating students would be able to interact about the the book they are reading as and when they have something to say, rather than waiting for the next meeting to discuss their thoughts. In addition, it is a way that I can easily give students credit for their ideas and of course take part in the discussion, which is not always possible in the classroom.  I plan on making our first efforts at blogging password-protected if possible, and I welcome any ideas about how to set that up effectively. If it works as well as I hope, then I would love to invite a larger audience to participate, maybe including the author of the book as described on several blogs. I would also like to include both parents and perhaps some community figures, but I want a trial run without an audience first.

This forum for discussion and collaboration expands the boundaries of the classroom, as November (2008) explains in Web Literacy for Educators. In addition, it utilises techonology in a way that makes sense to students in the Informational Age - or, dare I say, the Communication Age (Thornburg in Laureate Education, 2010). Showcasing their thinking in this way sets the bar higher for individual performance and expression, allowing students themselves to take the reins of the discussion.

I obtained a lot of ideas for blogs from reading the following blogs posted by teachers.
A great one to read is

http://primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au/2012/07/20/making-educational-blogging-work-for-you/comment-page-1/#comment-3278 by Kathleen Morris, who also is great at responding to posts. I also enjoyed http://itc.blogs.com/thewriteweblog/page/5/ by Anne Davis, but this site although useful seems to be inactive at present. I chose both of these blogs beacuse the students involved are roughly the same age as my students.

 

I hope that I will be able to start the "getting ready" process next week, and once again I welcome suggestions and advice about how to manage the process of blogging for the classroo,

Resources:

 

Knobel, M., & Wilber, D. (2009). Let's talk 2.0. Educational Leadership, 66(6), pp. 20-24.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Designing curriculum, instruction and assessment. Baltimore, MD.

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.