Let's face facts. Our students are much more comfortable (and experienced!) with technology than we are.
Marc Prensky refers to our students as "Digital Natives" while we are the "Digital Immigrants." Not only do we need to keep up with our students in order to maintain their interest, but we also need to reach them where they are. And the place they're at . . . The Internet!
I attended a workshop at
NYSCATE (but regretfully don't remember the presenter's name) where the biology teacher decided the best way to get his students talking about science was to post questions online. And it worked! He presented weekly blog topics and students were required, at some point during the week, to respond to his post. He said that the funniest part was when he got comments from parents, also. GOOD comments from parents...
BUT before you jump into it, there are certain considerations:
1. Will your blog be for teachers or for students?
- If you choose to blog about teaching, remember that your blog is available to the public. One missed word, one google search, and everyone (colleagues, parents, students, administrators) can read all that you never intended. On the other hand, many of the blogs I linked earlier are meant for teachers and therefore include very little personal information.
- If you choose to blog for students, you will need to consider where you will post the blog (you can have it right on our school network), if it will be required assignments or optional work, and how you will maintain the privacy of your students.
2. If you're blogging for students, what about security issues?
- The important thing is to maintain the anonymity of students. Some teachers choose to assign nicknames to students and have them register for the blog using the nickname. Remember that the student emails on our district server contain their last names, so it probably isn't a good idea to use that as their blog nickname.
- Some teachers choose to make their blogs private and "invite" their students. That way, you will know who has access to your blog.
- If you choose to have a public blog not linked to the school, you may want to consider not having any school names or identifying features. For example, when I first started my personal blog I didn't reveal anything about where I worked. Two years later, one of my readers realized I lived in her old hometown...
3. What tone will you have on your blog?
- This depends on your purpose for blogging. Are you trying to get students to think critically about issues from class or from current events? Are you trying to increase reading and writing outside of the classroom? While the tone of your posts may change over time, you should decide a general flow before you introduce this to your students.
- If your blog will serve as an extention of class discussions, consider posing a question that students should respond to. Or consider posting an interesting link relating to what was discussed in class.
- Blogs without pictures are boring. (Most of my posts do not have pictures.) Remember good netiquette, and site the source of your pictures. (Mine were from flickr, or they appeared on more than one result when I did a google search so I established that the original site was unknown.)
- Will the blog be required reading? How will you assess that students have read the posts?
- Will students be required to comment? If so, how often will students need to post?
- If students don't have home access to the Internet, how can you be sure all students will have enough time to read and respond to the blog posts?
Your fourth assignment:Answer those questions! Will your blog be for teachers or students? What other things did you consider?
As you continue to read blogs, you may want to mark the ones you visit most frequently. I use www.bloglines.com to read my blogs. I can organize my favorite blogs by topics and Bloglines automatically checks to see when there are new posts. With 92 blogs on my current list (and three more that I regularly read but aren't available on RSS feeds), this is a HUGE time saver.
