Thursday, September 22, 2011

Giving Students a Voice


 
I was talking with some elementary school teachers the other day about blogging with their students. I have been reading a lot of blogs and articles about how and why teachers should get students to blog. In the TPAK model from The College of William & Mary (Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge), they have curriculum based activities. I was looking in the Literacy Activities and there are a lot of the activities that include Blogging. 

Blogging would also meet several of the goals and objectives in the Language Arts Standard Course of Study. I got the idea after ready Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano's Langwitches Blog on "Blogging with Elementary School Students". In her blog she states: "Blogging is one way of linking writing, reading, and connecting information and learning together." I agree with this. This would also be a good way to become a global class by connected with other countries. Silvia has written a lot of blog posts about students, blogging, and has how-to guides that you can download. You can also follow Silvia on Twitter @Langwitches.

One of the ideas I got from reading different blogs was to have your students create a paper blog first. Then you can hang them in your room or hallway and have your students learn how to comment on these paper blogs. Also, it would be good if the whole school came by to comment on the blogs!

Edublog has a student blogging challenge that has students creating a blog and then having activities to help make the blog readable. You can find the challenge here: Student Blogging Challenge Supported by  Edublogs.

If you are still not convinced about students blogging, here are a couple of other articles that might convince you:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75529685@N00/300232474

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