I think Blogs have great potential for student use in the classroom as long as they are being used appropriately. Using a constructivist approach to learning and focusing on inquiry based strategies would be a great use of a blog. If a student poses a question they are curious and motivated to learn about it would be a great forum for additional input from a community of peers. This would be a great place to share links and gather information with others to help answer the question posed. It allows students a great platform for project based learning where they can explore real world context and problems and get expert opinions to develop solutions with a community of other learners.
I don't think blogs are designed for the more traditional methods of teaching where the teacher needs to be the "sage on the stage". Deductive teaching and even even inductive teaching methods would be better served in another format.
I think in the science area a great use of blogs would be to use them when developing a hypothesis for a science experiment or project the students would like to conduct. They could fine-tune their question and develop a method and answers to the questions in a community.
I do think that blogs could be used at times for other subjects that we may not see as applicable at first. If we really use our imaginations blogs can come in handy in other ways. I think they are a great source for the pursuit of the "why" behind lots of things. It isn't a place to practice math facts but it is a good place to help understand your math facts. For example, let's say a student doesn't understand why you can simplify fractions and still have the same value you started with even though there are different numbers. If they posed this questions to others on their blog sight it would be great for them to get responses from peers that understand it and can communicate it in a way for them to understand. Someone might also blog a link to help them better understand etc.. It allows a dialogue between students and experts that have common interests. We just need to be careful not to force a square peg into a round hole just because we can.
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Hi Michelle, thanks for re-authoring me, it finally worked :)
ReplyDeleteI love your point about how blogs are a "great forum for additional input from a community of peers". This fact really makes blogs a usable tool for any subject. You prove that blogs could be used by any subject later in your post when you mention that math students can use a blog as a forum for discussion about a concept that they don't get. I like the idea of having their peers being in communication with them about difficult class topics. This would be true constructivisim at work.
I am right there with ya on the science experiment blog! I want to try that out with my students and their science fair projects. Hopefully it works out!
ReplyDelete"If we really use our imaginations blogs can come in handy in other ways. I think they are a great source for the pursuit of the "why" behind lots of things." Well said. Blogs can be used by students for most classroom subjects - for book studies, explaining the the "how" behind solving a math problem, etc.
ReplyDeleteI also love the idea of getting input from the community! I also think that it is a great way for students to share what they are doing at school. I am very excited to implement this into my classroom! I would love for my students to give each other feedback on their artwork!
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