Barrs and Horrocks express that blogging in schools has been seen as an effective practice if use correctly. Although some blogs by students have been seen as vague and didn’t allow or encourage responses from other students in regards to feedback and comments, thus it is important to have guidance from the class teacher. To encourage students to research and self-educate the teacher should ask probing questions to enable the student to move on or further their learning and understanding of a topic. Barrs and Horrock also suggest that its important not to always provide exact locations for the students to research as this will allow them to explore the internet in regards to a safe topic. At a younger age it is important for students to develop an investigative nature towards their works, as when they get older and move on to years 5 and 6, structure become more vital in regards to the style and type of writing produced by the student. As the teacher your role is to comment on blogs to stimulate the students learning. Comments can be a form of motivation showing students that as the teacher reading their works as well as showing they ‘care’. This can also promote further learning.
When it comes to blogs I feel that Barrs and Horrocks agree that as the teacher it is important to be enthusiastic and enjoy class blogging, making them creative, engaging and inclusive for all students. Blogs can enable students to focus on content rather then literacy books that are used in class all the time. Students responses often depend on the teachers initial prompt, the class needs a standpoint for approaching a task as well as a time constraint to promote an effective blog. The role of a teacher throughout blogging is key to the success of the project.
Blogging videos has also been highlighted in Barrs and Harrocks article as effective classroom tools as the teacher to develop students understanding and knowledge of a reading or lesson through this. Blogs can allow a new library for learning, as videos can be embedded in order to enrich the lesson or activity.
When introducing blogs to the classroom it is important to build up to them as this it a new platform for the students to work with and they may need to adjust their style of writing. The affect of moving from paper to online can be hard for some students and preparation is key, it may even benefit the students if they take part in a oral rehearsal before filming a video blog. Another way to integrate blog into the classroom or at home would be to keep them relevant to the class topic or homework, taking it step by step leading in to a new blogging community.
Barrs and Harrocks discuss the idea that blogging isn’t just for the classroom, allowing children to continue their blogging as homework could improve the relationship between school and home. Home blogging also give the student work time to improve or increase content in their blogs. On the other hand not all students will have access to the internet or a computer at home thus this could create issues so perhaps time could be allocated after school to those whom need it. Allow the Student access at home could also widen their scope of topic that they are able to blog about, for example they could create their own safe blogging environment for home activities.
Analysing some of pedagogic approaches to blogging in these project classrooms have shown teachers are utilizing this tool but there’s still a connection to writing on paper, this can help to develop the students literacy work through different mediums. Blogging can have affect to the quality of writing good and bad depending of the method or quality of teacher, it can also become a cross curriculum activity as links often improve work. Good writing content has a purpose.
Key features of a blog are:
- Good content and ideas
- Real meaning and purpose
- Imagination originality
- Creativity
- Fluency and momentum
- A strong sense of a reader/ audience
Eloise, I am interested in your point about video blogs being embedded to further there learning. Whilst on placement this could have been a good idea for children to have a video of themselves carrying out maths activities. This could be shared to enable other children to see such things that they might not see otherwise and give them confidence to do activities themselves. I think this may also help other children to learn as conversation and actions are more familiar to them. It would be great to be able to share moments like these as well with parents, although the whole data privacy problem is something to think of.
Interesting Ideas. Are there any issues with blogging that might put you off using this in the classroom?