"The Courage to Blog With Students" Education Week

Have a look at this article:
http://bit.ly/l3sDlc

It has some fantastic blogging resources and reasons why blogging is becoming such an important learning and self-reflection tool for 21st century learners and teachers.

Headings include:

1. The best way to get your feet wet without drowning is to use a group blog (a personal favourite)
2. Teach students how to write comments (all part of effective literacy practice)
3. Use what you already have in your teaching plan with some minor adjustments (don't reinvent the wheel!)
4. Safety
5. Communicate with parents about what you are doing.

We would love to know your thoughts on this.

Feel the Fear and Blog Anyway?

We'd love to know your thoughts about your blogging concerns.  Are they around Internet Safety and Security issues?  Are you concerned about people you don't know posting comments?  Are they around sharing your thinking about teaching and learning, and being judged for those thoughts?
What do you see as the main issues or concerns around blogging - for any age group?


We'd also love ideas for other discussions that we could have in this forum.  Please email one of the Blog Team, or add your ideas as comments.  

An Example of 5 Year Olds Using Their Blogs

Hi everyone
Please have a look at the link below to see what 5 year-olds at Myross Bush School can achieve in their learning.
Their teacher has set up the blog, and the children participated in workshops run by our Year 6 students.
The children are learning to independently comment on the blog - a great way to show and reflect on their learning.

http://myrossroom1.blogspot.com/

The first barrier which seems obvious to me is the whether or not the blog is easy to use. We have seen just in our discussion this week, the problems with people understanding how to post and then technical problems once a person has posted. Lai and Chen (2010) identified ease of use and the time it takes to learn the technology as two of the barriers to secondary teachers adopting teaching blogs. (p. 958) Anthor factor which they identified was that it can be very time consuming for teachers to keep track of posts and provide detailed answers or information back to students promptly (Lai and Chen, 2010, p. 954).

I'm curious to know from those of you who may have used blogs if you found these factors to be challenging. And, if so, did you have strategies to over come them?

Cheers, Mary

Our Second Question to Ponder

We are enjoying the discussion!  Have a look at the second question and add your thoughts.  Let's get some great discussion going!


Remember, just click on the comments at the bottom of this post to add your thoughts.  You will have to choose the 'comment as' option and click on the one applicable to you.  


What do you see as the ‘barriers’ to implementing the use of blogs in your teaching and learning environment?

Our First Question

Hi everyone.

Please watch the video below. We'd love to read your thoughts to get the discussion going.

Please add your ideas by clicking on 'comments' at the bottom of this post.

In the educational context, what subjects do you think would benefit from using blogs by assisting teachers to gain effective and productive outcomes? Why?