Blogs in the Classroom

The required reading for the previous weeks led me to thinking about the value of using a blog with my future students. I thought it’d be a good idea to examine the web and see what’s out there as far as classroom blogs related to my subject area, English. A blog is a complementary tool to classroom instruction because teachers only have so much time to cover material during the class period and a blog can aid them in addressing vital topics that didn’t get around to being discussed during their meeting. For instance, when discussing a literary text and analyzing the various elements of literature, it’s almost impossible for the discussion to address every theme, motif, important quote, and interpret every interesting character. A blog can function as a supplement or classroom counterpart by encouraging students to post their reactions to reading, thoughts, reflections and questions they wish to have answered. Perhaps a student likes a particular quote and wants to explain their interpretation of it and its meaning to the text. Maybe they feel perplexed by a passage and want help understanding it. A blog can make both of these situations possible.

I plan to use a classroom blog in my future, but I am aware that my goals may be affected by how the students use the blog. One problem with this type of learning is that students may not feel confident enough sharing their work/writing with their classmates. They feel intimidated by the idea of others “judging” their work, and this discourages them from participating. If a teacher requires students to post for a grade or offers extra credit for their contributions, students will feel more compelled to engage with their fellow classmates. By offering a reward for their posts, students will feel motivated to participate and fine tune their work so their peers, as well as their teacher, is impressed.

I don’t have much practice with blogs, but now that I am thinking more seriously about how I can incorporate technology into the classroom, I decided to follow an English teacher’s blog. I wanted to get a sense of how exactly students use it, how the teacher uses it and how students respond. I was pleased with my findings and got ideas for how I want to use my classroom blog in the future. In the blog, a tenth grade English teacher keeps track of an assignment calendar and ongoing vocabulary list for students to keep track of throughout the semester. He has blog posts due before class sessions, most likely so in class, they can discuss the posts. One thing I liked that he did is make the posts of the students accessible to other students, but they are all “anonymous.” This helps with the issue I addressed earlier relating to student insecurities.

All in all, the teacher included access to all posts from every unit, extra credit assignments offered to his students, and she asks for student feedback in regards to what makes a good discussion. This shows that the teacher values his students and what they would like to see happen in the classroom. His blog is something I hope to model; he even makes tackling the complexities of Shakespeare fun!