Friday, June 26, 2009

Thing 3

I have used a blog at work using Edublogs.  However, I couldn't get many people to follow.  I tried to get students and teachers alike to log in, both in secure blogs for teachers only and public blogs for students and teachers to comment.  It just didn't catch on in the library setting.  I do know that our computer literacy teacher at the high school level did have great luck with her classes and getting them to blog.  My hope is to keep trying to get more to blog.  It's really amazing how comfortable kids feel when they can express their thoughts in a blog.

In the fall I am going to set up a blog site for my book club for them to discuss the books online both before we meet and after we meet.  This will allow for their ideas and comments to be heard and for those who can't actually come to the meetings to speak about the books.

I truly believe that students will find blogging really fun.  They all do it now, it's just that they use My Space and Facebook more than anything else.

Some concerns that I have are: 1. students will not understand the how to respond, 2. teachers will not encourage their students to blog, and 3. once it's posted, it's posted.  All users need to remember the guidelines when posting so that their privacy is kept and so that they feel comfortable blogging.

CR
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1 comment:

  1. lisd23thingsJune 28, 2009 at 5:23 PM

    Your concerns are valid. Students ARE more interested in Facebook than blogging. It's important to establish those guidelines early both for protecting student privacy and for teaching them to write respectfully for their audience and peers, especially when posting comments where they may not agree with the post. It's a culture change and learning curve for our schools. It will be interesting to see what happens in your school if you decide to stick with a blog and keep people informed using this tool. Part of the process is giving them time to be aware you're using the tool and getting them in the habit of checking there. Like most web 2.0 tools, blogging is probably not for everyone.

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