Blogs are great in the classroom. In my class, for example, the students are required to "show" what they have accomplished during the course of their projects (group projects with individual blogs... and grades). The blog allows them to document what they have done and, at the same time, share it with others. This also creates a sort of "peer" or "parent-pressure," where they know that someone else... a friend or guardian can see what they have or have not done.
The greatest challenge in using blogs is the safety. When parents send their children to school, they feel that they are sending them to a safe environment, and that nothing in the education process will jeopardize that sense of safety.
I use blogging to allow the students to communicate what they have created, produced, or built. Each day, at the end of class, they have the opportunity to document what they accomplished... and add pictures, video, or audio of where they are in the process. This will allow others, in our class or school, to offer feedback and to ask questions about the intended goal and the likelihood that it will be attained.
Go to blogger.com and create your blog now!
Such communication meets a variety of NETS standards, including the following:
1. Creativity and Innovation
- b. create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
- a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.
3. Research and Information Fluency
- c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness of specific tasks.
Many others apply due to the nature of the constructivist projects, partnership based projects that are developed in my classroom. What activities are you doing that "hit" the NETS standards (and which do they meet).
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