"A weblog is an easily created, easily adapteable Website that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection" (Richardson, 2009, p. 17). As a seventh grade math teacher, I believe that blogs are a good tool for instruction because they allow students to create their own ideas using specific resources to back up their thinking. Blogs are an excellent way to check for understanding of the specific content you teach, while also allowing students to create connections with other ideas.
Although I used a blog in my classroom last year, I plan to do use them differently in the upcoming school year. Instead of having one blog area for all of my students to post comments to topics that I have created, I plan to have each student create their own blog. Each blog will be linked to our classroom website so that all students can share and discuss the important issues of seventh grade math with one another. Although the blogs will be theirs to create, I plan on having some specific assignments and criteria for the blog itself. The criteria of the blog will include: creating and participating in discussions, uploading links to math resources and using it as an online portfolio for important classwork. With this criteria in place I believe that the student blogs will easily enhance math lessons by becoming more interactive for the students and make learning math more meaningful.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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9 comments:
Hi Erin:
I like your ideas and although I have never used blogs before our course here at Walden I do see the potential for using it in the classroom.
Erin what was it about the one blog area that you did not like why you plan to change it this year and have students set up their own individual blog?
Do you have to take the student to the computer lab for this exercise, or do you have the computers in your room?
The other problem that I think about is do all your students have a computer in their homes so that they can access the blog form home and complete the assignment there?
Just wondering so that I will have a good idea of how to set things up when I start back in the fall.
Lorna,
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. The reason why I am changing to have multiple blogs rather than one is due to the fact that the students did not "own" their work like I intended the blog to do. I hope that by having each student create their own blog they will get more into the assignments and I will have better participation.
As for having computers at home, I did think of that dilema and decided that the blogs are worth it to me. Almost all of my students have a computer at home and those that do not are allowed to use the six we share in the classroom or the lab in the library. I think that I will have to sign up in advance for the computer lab every two weeks or so. That way students who do not have home computers can get caught up in class.
Overall, I really want my students to feel more ownership in their blog and to have it available for use as an online portfolio of the students work.
Here is the blog I created last year: http://7mathbull.blogspot.com/
Great ideas here!! How did you use the blog last year in your class?? Are you going to use it differently next year becuase it did not work? Some anticipated trouble spots...is there a free blog site that students can use safely? Is this included in your internet use forms that your student's parent's sign? How many students do you have- will it be a lot to look at/approve all of them?
Suggestions:
1-use one of the free blog sites we used (while we are using it make sure it seems to be safe for us)
2-Check your school's internet use form, and if it does not have something about public blogging, send home an addendum to the original form.
3-use an aggregate like google reader to monitor student progress/grade their work.
(Sorry to sound like I am questioning you- it is wierd for me to anticipate problems for other teachers!!)
Take care
Christine
I like the idea of having students create their own blog, it would give them more ownership and would be an easy way to grade a student's participation and effort.
One challenge you might have is including mathematical symbols in posts that are not on the keyboard. For example, it could be difficult to write the quadratic equation on a blog.
Thank you all for your questions! They got me thinking about next year and how excited I am to get started with blogs.
Last year I created a form that students had to have their parents sign for using blogs, glogster, and other Internet sites in class. For the most part I had all students bring back their forms because they were so excited to be doing something outside of the textbook.
As for free and safe sites, I found that Blogger worked well for what I wanted to accomplish. I was able to set permissions so that the comments would not be published until I read them and approved. Not only did it filter the comments, but it also let me know when the site was updated.
I do not know what I am going to do about math symbols. One way that I did this before was to scan in assignments and then upload them to the websites. Do you have any other ideas?
Hi Erin. It's good to read a post from someone who has already used blogs with her students.
I'll be curious to hear how your use of individual blogs for each student works out for you. I also teach math and have thought about classroom blogs vs. individual blogs. My concern for the individual blogs is the amount of time you'll spend assessing them. You've probably already thought about this, but it would probably be easiest to subscribe each one and manage them in folders categorized by class in order to assess them.
My other concern would be the use of math symbols on the keyboard. It's tough for kids to figure out, for example, how to write a fraction or square root notation on a keyboard. You'll probably need to have lessons previous to your blogging assignments that include some instruction on how to do those things.
Great ideas you have! I'd like to keep in touch through next school year to see how your individual blogs are working for you. We might even be able to have our students exchange some ideas or problems or find some ways to communicate about math!
Susan-
I would LOVE to keep in contact through blogging next year! What grade level do you teach?
I think that I will have to do a lot of preparing with the students on how to use blogs specifically in math class. I think that it will be well worth it in the end.
As for grading the individual blogs, I think that I will have a seperate folder for each class in my aggregator. That way I can see when students' blogs are updated with new information. I will probably check the blogs once every two weeks or maybe even each month.
I am really excited about the idea of bloging with you class as well! That would be fun!
Let's plan on it! I teach 7th - 9th grade math and I know my 7th graders would love to communicate with kids in another state. We need to start keeping a list of ideas for things we can exchange or collaborate on. In my post on my blog, I mentioned students from different schools challenging each other with different word problems. We may even be able to work on some collaborative experiments together where our classes collect data to be combined and analyzed. Who knows what we might come up with for ideas! It will be fun!
Erin
I like your idea of having students creating a blog that has some structure. This will allow you to teach them some guidelines of blogging.
My 5th graders would definitely benifit from creating a blog with some guidelines. If they were allowed to create any blog they wanted I fear there would be some inappropriate information posted.
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