One way of using blog in my classroom is to give the students a list of objectives and expectations posted on the web blog and ask them to go and research using resources. My expectation can be a project, problem solving. A rubric of the learning outcome will also be posted to guide the students learning.
This activity will enable the students to take ownership of their learning. It gives them a feeling of independence and sense of achievement while learning from their peers which may even be non group members. It also gives them opportunity to practice the use of web.
The grade level is 09, science. A blog will be a good instructional tool in this context because it motivates and increases student engagement. it exposes the students to a wide source of knowledge and promote deep thinking.
Your blog project sounds like a lot of fun for the students. They really like to go out and investigate. Would you provide them with a list of resources to research or would you leave that open to them to find their own?
ReplyDeleteI will give them suggestions of some website but will give points for those able to get more relevant information from other sources in addition
ReplyDeleteIt sounds as if you are planning to use the blog to "build community"- a bulletin board for ongoing dialogue for assignments. Would you have the students also us the blog for publishing their work? If so, would you review the information before they are allowed to publish? How would you handle the student that does not have access to Internet?
ReplyDeleteMany students come to school with differnet skills concerning the internet and researching. Many freshmen I know think Wikipedia and Google are the best and most reliable sources. If I were to use your blog idea, I would first introduce them to the databases available through our Library Media Center and teach them how to evaluate research. Would all students research the same topics or would they be assigned different units from your course? What types of problem solving would they be researching?
ReplyDeleteOne of the limitations to the use of blogging as a classroom instructionis that not all students have access to internet. However there are many libraries around that students can go to do their assignment.The intention on the blog project is to get students into my class with agood knowledge of the topic which wuold have been acquired thruogh blogging. Iam going to be a participant in the blogging so that I wuold have corrected any misconception before publishing. Publishing on the blog will be for scholarship purpose as a hard copy will be submitted for grading. Students learn faster from themselves so deliberate choice of group members will make up for the differences in skills concerning the internet and researching. Many of the kids are already farmiliar with google, yahoo and wikipedia
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