Due to a delay with my book at Amazon, i searched for some journal articles about blogging in the classroom. One article i found to be really good was "Capitalizing on Emerging Technologies: A Case Study of Classroom Blogging." This article really emphasized the benefits of using a classroom blog such as; they promote reflective thinking, nurture collaboration and relationship building among students, increased perceived accountability and therefore increased quality of student work, increased opportunities for students to receive feedback and they extend learning outside the classroom walls. The article also gave a couple great ideas on how to seamlessly incorporate a blog into the classroom. After reading this article and some of my classmates post about the chapter in the book I had found several ways I would use a blog in my own classroom.
1. Student Reflection: At the end of each unit test I would like to know what the students felt they learned, what they liked best, and what wasn't their favorite. I think that having them post these reflections to a blog alows their classmates to see who else had similar problems, or who might be able to help them with a topic they struggled with.
2. Classroom information: I think a classroom blog should be a place where students and parents can come to get information about what is going on in class. I would like to post a section with assignments, upcomming test and quizes, or extra credit opportunities. I already posted to my blog a section with my pick for the best Earth Science websites that that studnets can use for review and extra help.
3. Daily Classroom post: A great idea I got from the article was having a different student assigned either each day, or a week at a time, to record what happened in class that day. This would be great feedback for me as a teacher to see what they thought was happening in class as well as a place for students to see what they missed if they were absent from class. In the article the teacher said often these post would have the day's notes, sample problems, and highlights of the days discussion. The teacher would also gove the student who was responsible for that days post a problem to add to their discussion that the rest of the class could do for one extra credit point. This gave his students motivation to check the classroom blog daily.
I can't wait to get my book in to read about more ways to use a classroom blog!
