Salla's Blog

How blogs can be used in school/education?

Our task was to search for sources, how blogs can be used as an educational tool. Here underneath I’ve listed some of the sources I found followed by their best points and my own thoughts. Before I started to do this task, I never thought that there would be that much information about our subject! I’ve never heard anyone talking about this subject in Finland but, still, I found a few good sources in Finnish, too.

Quotes are from the sites referenced.

http://www.slideshare.net/villevenalainen/blogien-kytt-opetuksessa

- Points out that blogs can well be used

o as a channel to share information

o as a discussion forum

o as forums for Students to reflect their own learning and learn from the others

- A class can write its own blog. I think that would be a very good task for Finnish/English lessons.

http://www.edu20.org/

That’s a new virtual learning environment. Looks very interesting! I definitely recommend you to look at it a bit closer. With this program you can for example arrange virtual lessons, write your own blog (public or private), network with other people and benefit from sources the users have put there. Maybe a web site like this is the future of education?

http://www.21classes.com/

That’s a same kind of an environment for class room blogging.

http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml

“Blogs, because of their ease of use, and because of the context of news and editorial column writing, have become a highly effective way to help students to become better writers.”

“Educators know that students write better when they have a real audience — not just a teacher with a red pen.”

I think that is one of the most important effects of blogs to education. Publishing an own blog can be easy way to encourage and motivate the pupils to write. Let the pupils decide themselves about which topic they want to write. There shouldn’t be too many limitations but of course you, as a teacher, should remind the kids that others can read their texts, too. Well, we all know, that the only way to become a talented writer is to write as much as possible! And we have to remember the pupils with special needs, too. For someone the hardest part of writing is to try to keep the pen in hand and type the letters. Using a computer can open a new world to those kids!

http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/sharingpractice/b/blogging/whyblogineducation.asp?strReferringChannel=ictineducation

There are some great ideas for class room blogging. I especially like the idea of “Best work blog”. Pupil has to publish his week’s best work in a blog. Knowing, that his work will become public, encourages a pupil to work harder. I think it’s a good way to improve the self-evaluating skills, too. It’s not that easy to say which school work is the best and why. Using commenting boxes help kids also to learn how to give positive feedback and compare works in a positive way.

http://www.edtech.sandi.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=354

There you can find very convincing reasons why to use blogging in education! It is true that the literature of our time is changing rapidly and blogs, for example, are something we read every day nowadays. Every once in a while I notice, that the way I’m thinking can be slightly old-fashioned, but the school/education system shouldn’t be! It’s schools duty to prepare the kids for the world! That’s why we have to remember this following aspect, too: “Blogs provides the opportunity to discuss responsible public writing. We can learn about the power of the published word and the responsibilities involved with public writing.”

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt

There is an interesting part: “Keeping students interested”. It happens easily, that teacher is, at first, extremely excited about a new teaching/learning environment, but step by step the attraction decreases. Then you can’t get the most out of blogging as an educational tool. In this web entry there’re a few good tips, how to keep up the enthusiasm. As long as the teacher is excited, the kids have more fun, too .

__________

In (almost) every source I read, the safety views are highlighted. In internet occurs a lot of bullying these days. Unwanted comments, writings and photos in wrong hands, other vandalism take place often. That’s why active conversation in class room must be a part of blogging, I think. Kids must know which their rights and responsibilities are, how to know which information in internet is trustworthy, how they can protect their personal information. Teacher has to be aware of the harmful sides of using internet as an educational environment, to benefit blogging the most!

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