Blog 4 – Barrs and Horrocks: ‘Educational blogs and their effects on pupils’ writing’ – Reflection
[embeddoc url=”https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/~/media/EDT/files/research/2014/r-blogging-2014.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
A thoroughly robust and substantial argument for the use of blogs in schools. I heartily agreed with all of it and will definitely use blogs in my classroom. The area I wish to magnify, however, is on assessment. I’m not so confident in this area, you see. How do you mark blogs? Is it the same as for literacy in their books? How can you tell improvement over time? Can I use a green biro on the computer monitor?
The article mentions, for a start, that teachers that utilised blogs would comment on their pupils’ posts in a very different way. Responding more positively, less criticism, no correcting of punctuation and spelling and more of a continuing of the conversation than as an assessment of their work (and no green biro on the monitor). Some teachers conducted comprehension and discussion on the carpet to further evaluate children’s blogs.
The pupil’s definitely noticed the difference and responded positively, feeling less under pressure and able to write with more freedom. The case studies in the article were conducted over a period of several months so (most) teachers were able to see improvements by comparing early and later blogs and also their book writing.
I thieved a rubric for assessing blogs off the internet (from http://edtechteacher.org/assessment/) and, although it is designed more for higher education use, it’s not so specific that it cannot be used in primary school.
[embeddoc url=”https://timhorgan.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/blogging-rubric.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
Since reading this article, I’m much more confident in how blogs can be used, how they should be presented to children to be most effective and how to assess the children in order to maximise their self-esteem, further their understanding of the topic and improve their writing in all areas.
Your point of how to assess blogs is an interesting topic. Blogging communities are quite informal and casual so how do schools find the balance between allowing children to engage in a social interactive platform as well as engaging them in an intellectual manner which allows teachers to assess students formally?
Yeah, true. I think the balance is somewhere between complete freedom and marking as you would Literacy work. Blogging can still have learning intentions and therefore assessment criteria. This can be areas different to Literacy as mentioned above so blogging can be used to target those areas.