Classroom uses of weblogs

Classroom uses of weblogs

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  Weblogs in theClassroom: Ideas and Usage Personal, Reflective Ideas: • Reflect on your teaching experiences etc. • Keep a log of teacher-training experiences etc. • Write a description of a specific teaching unit • Describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn’t work • Provide some teaching tips for other teachers • Write about something you learned from another teacher • Explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes • Share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom • Provide some how-tos on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class • Explore important teaching and learning issues Class blog ideas: • Post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments, and other pertinent class information • Post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own Weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work • Communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students • Post prompts for writing • Provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games • Provide online readings for your students to read and react to • Gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them • Post photos and comment on class activities • Invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice • Publish examples of good students writing done in class • Showcase student art, poetry, and creative stories • Create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning • Create a literature circle • Create an online book club • Make use of the commenting feature to have students publish massages on topics being used to develop language skills • Ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their ideas, reactions, and written work • Post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students • Build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take • Link your class with another class somewhere else in the world Encourage students to (either on your blog using the comments features or on their own Weblogs) to blog: • Their reaction to questions you provide • Their reactions to photos you post • Journal entries • Results of surveys you conduct in class • Their ideas and opinions about topics you are currently discussing Source: Richardson, Will. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.