The creation and use of blogs in my
fifth-grade language arts and science classroom was something that I
implemented during the last school year. I actually used three different blogs
to meet various classroom needs, two of which were open to the public and
accessible through a link from the school website. A personal Weebly website was used to maintain two of my
three blogs. I called one blog “Classroom News,” and utilized it to preserve an
open line of communication with my class parents. I posted announcements about
upcoming events and photographs of field trips and classroom happenings to this
blog, and I received many comments back from students and their parents. I
updated this blog on an as-needed basis. The second blog on my Weebly website was a weekly homework blog. Updates
were made to this blog each weekend for the upcoming week of school, and the
blog served to provide my class with an estimated view of the weekly homework
assignments. I clearly explained to my students, both in class and on the blog,
that the blog entry was just a prediction of the week’s homework assignments.
They were forewarned that there would be times and situations where the
assignments would be changed in class, and that, when in doubt, they should go
by what was written in their daily agenda book for the day. Students and
parents expressed thankfulness in having the blog as a way to look ahead at the
week’s responsibilities and as something to fall back on if they forgot their
agenda book at school.
The third
blog that I utilized last year was generated through the Kidblog website. This website allowed me to
create a class set of blogs, one for each student, in which I was the
administrator. The blogs were customizable, and I had them set up so that they
were only accessible to members of our class. All blog posts and comments required
my approval before they appeared on the blogs. I mainly used this blog as a way
for my students to become familiar with blogging and to respond to literature
based writing prompts. Students generally answered a question about the novel
we were working on, and then, as the year progressed, began commenting on one
another’s posts. In my experience last
year, these student blogs highlighted the powerful effect blogging can have on
the development of writing and the depth of literary connections made by
students. The majority of my students showed a greater interest in improving
their writing skills when contributing to their blogs. My more introspective
students were able to voice their opinions and ideas in a manner in which they
felt comfortable. Overall, blogging was an entertaining, engaging, and valuable
way to infuse 21st century skills into the reading and writing
curriculum.
During
this upcoming school year, I would like to continue the use of all three of my
blogs. Through reading the assigned chapters of Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful
Web Tools for Classrooms, I have become aware of the fact that the majority
of my personal blog use has come through posting, instead of true blogging. I do
still plan to utilize my classroom update and homework blogs in the same manner
as this year, but will try to encourage more input from my students. However,
in order to integrate more student blogging, it is my intention to develop further
the use of my students’ “kidblogs” and to
incorporate blogging across a wider variety of curricular areas. One specific
idea that I have for implementing this is to have my students use their blogs
in science class as we conduct a class-wide experiment. During fifth-grade,
science students are introduced to the scientific method through a scaffolded
class-wide project. They conduct this experiment together so that they are
exposed to the experience and develop knowledge on the process that they can
use during individual formal experiments later in middle school. By recording
their results online, I hope to see my students put forth more effort and have
an increase in conversations that occur regarding the experiment. This blog
could also represent a resource that could be used in the future. Should
students need a refresher as they work independently, they could go back to the
blog to view their own individual model of the process. Science teachers out
there, have you ever tried using a blog to document a science experiment? Do
you have any ideas or suggestions for doing so?
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs,
wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Thanks for sharing these resources Liza. I am new to the use of blogs in the classroom and so wanted to try to use this resource in my business studies lesson but did not get around to it due to my lack of exposure and limited research into its utilization in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThis course I am presently pursuing has certainly wet my feet into blogging and I cannot wait to set up my own blog for my class for the new school year. I will definitely be looking into the use of weebly and kidblog to assist in the process. Thanks!
Hi Liza,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have helped your young students gain exposure to blogging already. I am glad that you saw results from their work and feel that your efforts have been worthwhile. As you expand your use of blogs into science, some different issues may arise. Students may not have as much to comment on since there is more fact and less opinion involved in the scientific method. It may be most useful for students to use the blog to develop a question and hypothesis. The question and hypothesis would allow for the most discussion on forming their ideas using their knowledge of science. This may also work well with the analysis of the results from the experiment; they can help each other determine why that happened and what it means. One idea might be to use the blog for some discussion and development through the process. Then, when the experiment is complete, you and your students may be able to use all of the ideas from the blog to develop a "model" of the scientific method.
Good luck!
Ellen
Liza I see some difficulty with obtaining more input from students due to the nature of experimenting in science – students would report cause and effects from what they observed. With this in mine may I suggest the possibility of videotaping the experiment since it is a class wide experiment? This would then be editing and post on the blog and students can then be invited to post comments and or suggestions. Students would also be able to revisit the blog and view the video to refresh their learning/knowledge as well as you could use it to encourage and motivate upcoming fifth graders.
ReplyDelete~Leonie
Dear Ellen and Leonie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your input on my ideas. I knew that I wanted to incorporate blogging into my science class, but I was having some difficulty in figuring out how to use it. I agree with both of you that the utilization of blogging with the scientific method may just lead to students reporting what they saw (the cause and effect relationships), instead of truly analyzing the results.
Ellen, I like your idea of utilizing the blog more for the analysis questions than the entire lab. It led me to a specific idea for next year. Often, the homework on the day of a lab is to complete the analysis questions. This mostly occurs because we run out of time after completing and cleaning up the lab. Perhaps next year, I can have my students complete the lab in class and then go onto the class blog to read the analysis questions and respond. Students who do not have access to the internet could complete them by hand. Doing so would encourage students to put more thought into their analysis and answers. In past years, I have often “caught” students rushing to finish their questions right before the bell rings because they do not want to have homework. The use of a blog response will require them to thoughtfully respond to their observations. Thanks for the idea!
Leonie, I LOVE the idea of taping labs. A colleague and I had come up with the same idea last year as a means to decrease the number of times we needed to set up labs. See, in my school, students have both band and chorus lessons that occur during the week. The schedule rotates so that each student only misses a specific class once every six weeks. However, these lessons occur on Tuesdays and Fridays. That means that every Tuesday and Friday, I have students (usually 1-5 students per class) missing the lesson being covered. Sometimes it is impossible to plan labs on the remaining days. So, when we considered the kids in band and chorus lessons, the kids who were absent, the kids with PT, OT, or other service appointments, and the kids in the office for behavior issues, etc., there was NEVER a time when all of our students were in class. The only time we had to make up labs was Tuesdays during lunch or afterschool. Therefore, it would sometimes take weeks to get all of the students caught up on their missed labs. We had the idea of videotaping labs and posting them to our websites so that students who missed the experience could catch up on their own time. We used flipcams last year, and while they did work to some degree, we could see that we needed to make changes for next year. One problem was that we needed to create/buy some kind of stand for the flipcam so that teacher/student interaction with it is not necessary. I hope that this year we will be able to utilize the idea better!
Liza,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of taping lessons. My student often have difficulty following multi step directions. So to use them as a tool to show the, the lesson from a previous year would be a great model. That's a great idea!