Using Weblogs in the Classroom
I just had the most fantastic, if not the most obvious, of wonderful ideas! As with most really great ideas I am sitting here thinking, "I cannot believe that I hadn't thought of that before now..." Anyway, it was as I was reading through the NCTE's Council Chronicle about the upcoming convention that I will be unable to attend due to lack of funding that I made this discovery. I was reading up on all of the middle school topics and workshops that will be held over the long weekend and I was noticing how many technology topics there were, which I found to be very pleasing. And that got me to brainstorming about how I can incorporate technology into my classroom. I then began reading about how to help adolescent males more interested in reading. More brainstorming. I further read about writing workshops, in particular, authentic writing situations. It is at this point that I reached my epiphany.Wouldn't I be able to reach out to reach of these areas by using blogs in the classroom? Students would be developing and using technology skills. Computers tend to be of high interest to both genders. And weblogs would be a wonderfully authentic outlet for writing. I could select certain, appropriate blogs as examples. Some assignments could be completed on the blog. Other times the students would be allowed to free write. I am thinking that it would be kind of like SSR (Silent Sustained Reading) but instead SSW (Silent Sustained Writing) where the only requirements would be productivity. They select what to write, I select when. Blogs would be easy to check for completeness. I could even be an administrator on each account. They could design their layout and profiles. I could have them work as teams or small groups or they could work independently. Oh, it could be so much fun. Now I just have to figure out how to make it all work.
posted by Trisha @ 11:38 PM
