A blog can be a very useful element in the school. I thought from the beginning
that it should be difficult to use a blog in the early years (1-3), but after
some research I realize that I had wrong. You can use it from year 1 to the
university. I will be focusing more on the elementary school grades 1 to 6
because that it the years I am studying.
How to use it?
If you surf on the internet on school blogs you can see that many
teachers are using blogs for week information to the parents, they are
publishing pictures of what the children are doing inside and outside the classroom.
You can write what homework the children have other information. There is of
course endless of blogs on the net but one site I have discovered is skolbloggen.se where
several schools and teachers have blogs. You can get both inspiration and great
tips from the other bloggers on that website.
How to use it in the classroom?
Previously I have only talked about how the teacher can use a blog as a
great information forum to the students and the parents, but interesting is
also how the students can use a blog.
Example: You can read a book together in the class, either the teacher
reads loud or the children read by themselves, but everybody read the same
book. Then you can practice “book conversation” with the class. They can write
their opinions about the book in the blog, and maybe comment the others
thoughts. Depending on the age and the level that the children have, you can
give them variety of help. For example you can give them guidelines as: was it
something special you liked? Was it something you didn´t like? Was it something
you did not understand?.
Hopefully you get inspired to use a blog in school and I also hope that
you get more ideas with the blogging that you want to share.
Caroline Cras Linné university vt-12
Hi Caroline!
ReplyDeleteIt is a very interesting point of view to create a blog for educational uses. It can be inspiring and a good way for the students to make reflections and communicate through words. Many pupils have difficulties to express themselves in their spoken language so a blog is an option for this.
Many parents may not read the weekly paper of information, or go to meetings at school because there is no time. It’s sometimes hard for them to follow up what their children is doing and learning in school even if their very much indeed want to know these thing. A blog makes it really easy for the teacher to reach out to the parents that misses these meetings of information.
The thing that I get a little worried about is that the children get so exposed when it comes to media in every form. I brought this up as a complication for my ICT also. They can make statements on their blog, Ipad or forum that is not satisfactory for other children and then start a critical conversation that may led to bullying of any kind.
A good indication is that it can be visual for everyone to read if that’s the goal, which makes it a opportunity for other classes to get inspired and get ideas for a new task or theme. If not it can easily just included the class and its parents only.
If you think of smaller children and the complications for expressing themselves on a blog it doesn’t have to be that difficult really. You can for example make them put in pictures and photographs and small sentences when they are about to show what they have done weekly.
The inspiration is what sets the boundaries
Best regards!
Anja