Thinking About Learning

I have been blogging with students for 4 or 5 years. I am convinced that it is one of the best instructional tools that we have.  Sadly, it is also probably one of the most under-used. Several years ago I created a little video, “Top 10 Reasons to Blog with Students,” in an effort to promote student blogging. Now that YouTube is unblocked for teachers in my district, I recently added it there.

What are the most important features of a blog engine? A secure environment with options for monitoring student posts and comments is a must. The ability for students to upload a variety of file types is definitely a plus. Edublogs is a great blog engine, and I have used it for my personal professional blog for years. In today’s financial climate, cost is an inevitable issue, which unfortunately eliminates Edublogs Campus for me.

In the beginning I used Blogmeister with my students, which is David Warlick’s wonderful protected learning community for student blogs. After that first year, we decided we wanted our students to have a few more options for customizing. I’ve used 21 Classes in recent years, which is fairly user-friendly. We did encounter some computers locking up when attempting to save, but we haven’t determined if that’s an issue with our network or on their end. ClassPress is a relatively new blog engine that is currently being tested by another TIS friend, and I’m waiting to hear a report on that one.  In the meantime, I created a comparison chart of features:

I’m still exploring and open to suggestions!

One of the highlights of my week has been to have the privilege of getting two more 5th grade classes started on student blogs. We are using 21 Classes. It’s exciting to expose students and teachers to the possibilities of blogging! The potential for the expression of student learning and literacy development through blog writing is virtually an untapped resource in elementary schools. Students love to blog. It gives them a real world audience for their writing. It also allows them the opportunity to express their opinions and interact online with peers in meaningful ways. Blogs can enhance instruction in every content area. These students are excited about blogging, and it’s a great way to motivate them to write.

Curriculum Connections for Blogs:
Science: Write lab reports for experiments, discuss the application of the scientific method to various science activities, post research findings.

Math: Describe new math processes learned, post answers to word problems.

Social Studies: Commentary on current events, post research findings, compare and contrast events in history, summarize historical events, write biographical information about key historical people.

ELA: Book talks; describe specific story elements such as character analysis, setting, or plot; write poetry; personal narratives; demonstrate reading skills such as fact and opinion, cause and effect, compare and contrast, or figurative language; write biographies or autobiographies.