So far I have only been a consumer of information found on blogs and not a creator; however this year was the year to change. Since I had visited many blogs in the past, I was aware of some possible applications for them in my classroom. As a starting spot, I decided to create a homework blog where students can check on their homework assignments, ask questions, and post special events on our shared calendar. I understand that according to Richardson this is not real blogging but it’s a start (Richardson, 2010). Below is an example of how our blog looks and the type of things that we blogged on.
Starting to Blog
Screen capture of our homework
We quickly started using our classroom blog to share pictures of special events with parents at home. Below you will see some images from our blog showing Marty Chan’s visit, a visit from Father Michael Mireau and some projects that we have been working on.
Needless to say my students and parents fell in love with this blogging and wanted more. We have since setup many more blogs on topics were meaningful to students. Below you will see screen captures from our fun blog that is student centered and created, everything you will see is made by students for students:
In my search for best practices using blogs in the classroom, I came across this great site titled “64 Interesting Ideas for class Blogs” (https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AclS3lrlFkCIZGhuMnZjdjVfNzQ5ZnpiczlxYzM&hl=en_GB&pli=1 ) this site discussed many great applications of blogs and how teachers and students can use them effectively in a classroom setting. A few of these 62 suggestions stood out to me as they also appeared in Will Richardson’s “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for classrooms” (Richardson, 2010). They include:
1.Sharing photos of your classroom. Using one of our classroom blogs, I shared photos of really cool activities that my students were involved in (Richardson, 2010). Some of our favourite photos were from guest speakers such as Marty Chan and our district Chaplin Father Michael Mireau.
2.Sharing photos of a class display. This was a great way to show parents their child’s art work. Because I do post my students’ work on our bulletin boards, taking the work home is a challenge. Therefore parents usually wait for demo of learning or a time when they can come in to see the work (Richardson, 2010). Using our classroom blog this is no longer the case; parents simply login to our district site using their child’s credentials and are able to view all their child’s work.
3.After taking about two weeks to set-up and update out classroom blog, I have two students who have learned how to maintain the blog. They are continuously updating our site as the day goes on for all the subjects including classes like French that I do not teach. This is a great enrichment project for those students who like to take on more responsibilities (Richardson, 2010).
4.Students in my class are also using our blog site to post tutorials of recently covered topics. This is great. We have two students who are responsible for creating these tutorials for each subject area. In total, we have eight students creating video tutorials for Language Arts, Math, Science and Social. These lessons have become great learning tools for students who may have missed a class or would like to revisit a previously covered topic (Richardson, 2010).
5.Parent communication of special events. Using our classroom blog parents can check to see which important events are coming up. For example right now we have the dates for our Hep B immunizations, demo of learning and Halloween based special events (Richardson, 2010).
6.Student support network. Using our classroom blog students can post questions that they may have on a project or homework assignment enabling them to learn socially rather than independently. Normally a response is given within a few hours of the original post. This is a great tool that allows students to collaborate outside of the classroom! (Richardson, 2010)
