Class blogs | Aysin Alp's Blog

Social media is a great tool not only to build up our PLN but to transform learning to increase student engagement and empowerment as well. 21st century learners will not respond if you go on teaching with the traditional methods. Even though you have great teaching skills, you cannot be effective without being relevant to them. Look at the world they live in! It is being driven by technology at an amazing rate as you can see in the animated infographic from Pennystockslab below. Please follow this link to start the animation.

Our students live right in the middle of this tech infused, connected world. Consequently, they want to be actively involved in the learning process by connecting, collaborating and creating. If we don’t embrace this connected culture and integrate it into our classroom practice, then there will be a big gap between their real-life and in-class practices and they will find the learning experience totally irrelevant. Therefore, more and more teachers are trying to leverage social tools to facilitate learner engagement and to encourage the learning process.

Unfortunately, because many administrators, teachers and parents worry about safety issues, they are against using online social media platforms at school. Even though it is banned at some schools, many students are using these outside of the classroom, anyway. Therefore, online safety is an important issue that has to be taught by integrating digital citizenship resources into our curriculum, including the ones on appropriate use of social media. However, I don’t think the students will be able to internalize them and understand the importance of online presence if they aren’t allowed to practice them by using the social media networks in class.

Some educators think that using social media networks in the classroom causes distraction and cannot be considered as serious learning. I wish they could give it a try and see how the students respond to it. As long as they are carefully planned, implemented, and supported by systematic PD that empowers the teachers to use social media in a way that is best for student learning, these learning environments –inside and outside the classroom – offer a window to the real world, enabling each student to express themselves creatively and become actively engaged in their own learning. This way social media becomes a constructive tool to use with students to enhance learning.

The graphic below shows the tools teachers use to be networked and connected. In this first post on using social media in the classroom, I decided to write on blogging with students as it is my favorite one.

SOURCE: Edu Toolkit via Flickr

I love blogging with students as it gives them the opportunity to communicate their learning and their voice to a larger audience. Students are much more engaged and try harder than usual when they are producing work to share with people other than their teachers using mediums and tools they are familiar with. At our year-end polls, many students marked blogging as the activity they enjoyed most during the academic year.

By blogging, students who are not tech savvy become familiar with technology – a skill they will need a lot in the future. Moreover, it helps them understand the importance of a positive online presence. It is also a good way for the introverts to express themselves. As an English teacher, I can say that blogging is a great way for the students to improve their language skills. They can write book reviews, journal entries, answer the questions and respond to the pictures, videos or articles they themselves or their teachers have posted on the blog. They can also reflect on their own and their peers’ work and post their work (videos, glogs, Wordles, etc.) on their blogs. This way, they can receive feedback from people other than their teachers and they love it. Language Arts teachers can use blog posts and comments as an authentic way to teach a variety of literacy conventions and to enforce literacy concepts. It is a great way to make learning happen ‘on the spot’. Make sure to give your students the option of free choice posts together with the classwork-related ones. All this work, not only improves their English but their creativity, critical thinking and collaboration skills as well.

I don’t mean that blogging is great only for language learning. Students benefit from blogging in different courses in different ways and it should be practiced in all courses. For more info on the benefits of blogging in all courses this post on the benefits of educational blogging by Kathleen Morris will give you a better picture. Teachers blogging with their students should check her website, which is full of great resources and ideas.

Before you start setting up your blog, it is a good idea to examine other teachers’ and students’ blogs and share some of them with your students. Here, you can find 40 examples of class and school blogs. You can also have a look at the blogroll on Larry Ferlazzo’s blog to see his class blogs and visit Mrs. Yollis’ classroom blog where you can find fabulous blogging resources for teachers. This link will take you to 57 wonderful student blogs that you can share with your students. For more ideas, primary teachers can read the post by Linda Yollis on hows-and-whys behind blogging in the primary grades and high school teachers can read this post by Nicholas Provenzano, who thinks giving students the chance to write creatively about any topic is a must in a world where kids are constantly told what to write and when to write it. 5 Reasons Your Students Should Blog by George Couros is a must-read post for all teachers whether they are blogging with their students or not.

STEPS TO STARTING A CLASS BLOG

The first thing you should do before you start blogging is to carefully plan how you can integrate your student blog into your curriculum so that your students can benefit from it in the best possible ways.

The next step is to choose the platform for your class blog and learn how to set up and manage it.

Set your guidelines and discuss them with your students and your school community before you start blogging. Publish your guidelines on your blog, send home a copy and display them in your classroom.

Introduce your blog to parents for parent permission. It is important for the parents to understand their role in supporting their children as bloggers and recognize that a blog is a valuable tool to promote learning.

If your students are going to blog for the first time, you can start by discussing with them what a blog is and why you are going to use it.

Make sure that your students know the rules on cyber safety, netiquette, digital copyright and quality commenting skills before they start blogging.

Before they start commenting on each other’s posts, show your students a post written by you following the same guidelines and ask them to comment on your post. Give your students feedback on their comments.

Provide your students with as many exemplary student blog posts or blogs as possible. Talk to your students about what makes a good blog post both at the start of the blogging process and in the middle of it. Design a rubric (preferably with your students) for your blog and share it with your students before they start blogging. The example here may help you prepare your rubric. Use the rubric to give feedback to your students but don’t grade it.

Blogging is a great platform for students to learn about managing and participating in global learning communities. At my school, we cooperate with the teachers in the tech department to teach our students online tools they can embed into their pages and video creation. We often teach one tool at a time and wait until our students get competent using it before we introduce the next tool.

What I like best about blogging is the way it enables students to connect with the world, allowing them to learn with others. It is an amazing platform that provides students with a global audience and opportunities to work with other schools in global projects. Once your students have become familiar with blogging, you can connect with other schools to find a global audience for them via sites like Quadblogging, Lend Me Your Literacy, and by adding your blog to The Literacy Shed. You can also join United Classrooms, a service connecting classrooms across the world and Comments4Kids. There is a Twitter hashtag too (#Comments4Kids) that you can use to post blog links or ask questions.

You may also find this infographic helpful as a visual guide on why and how to blog. It was created by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano who has great resources and ideas on blogging.