IS BLOGGING FOR ME?

As this is my first blog, I should give you a little background into who and I am and what I am about.  I am a Canadian Middle School teacher that loves her students and wants them to have the best educational experience, preparing them for a future world that can't be predicted.  I have the privilege of teaching in a technologically state of the art classroom, in a school that highly encourages the use of technology in pedology. Before reading further, I would like to state that I am not a techno-phoebe! With that said, you probably can't call me a techno-file either.  I am probably somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the file end of the pendulum swing.

 I am writing this blog for a class on how to use technology wisely in the classroom.  My job today?  I need to analyse how I might or might not, use the technology of blogging in my classroom.  Truth be told, I have never written a blog, and I also don't read many blogs as well- only a select few educational ones.  Honestly, I have often perceived blogging to be a lot of checking the old bell button for you know what.  A lot of people writing about things I don't have time for, (keep in mind, I am NOT a techno-phoebe.).

So, to write this assignment, I had to do some research about how I could use blogging in my classroom to enhance learning. Below are some ideas I found on a number of different websites, about how blogging can be used in the classroom, filtered into categories of useful and not for me.


Ideas I found useful:

• Have students work in small groups to write and post summaries of content covered in class to build a compendium for content covered over a semester- Love this idea!
• Get students to do their writing assignments in the form of blog posts- worth a try!
• Encourage students to post comments on each others postings- love the interaction
• Use blogs for classroom projects where students can include videos, clips, audio,, text and images- love it!
• Challenge your students to write, record and post tutorials about certain concepts of things you teach them- Tutorials is a fabulous idea!  I may have to make a Math tutorial page, that my students work on.
• Use a section in your blog for classroom news where to communicate the general classroom news. Work with students to identify the kinds of information they would like to share with their parents, then engage them in writing and posting daily or weekly news updates- Classroom news could be relayed in this way, although Edmodo and Email do a pretty good job with this. 
• Post weekly challenges such as a riddle or brainteaser that requires your students to think creatively and critically.  Ask students to post their answers on the blog then discuss the solutions with the whole class at the end of the week. This will tremendously improve their problem-solving skills- Sounds like fun!

Not for me: 

• Provide further assignments for students to work on- I use Edmodo to communicate with my students.
• Use blogs for peer learning. Get students to read their colleagues writings and underline spelling and grammatical mistakes- boring! 
• Teachers can create a specific section just for website links and references to other interesting content online- I don't think blogs are the best way to communicate to students and parents.  It means that they have to actively seek out your blog. Communciating through email or through Edmodo is more more direct.
• Use blogs to conduct an online survey in relation to your students learning needs. You can also include parents in the surveys. Check out these free survey tools for teachers- SurveyMonkey is much more efficient. 
• Post  your classroom guidelines and code of conduct on your classroom blog for students to review- I would prefer to post this in my virtual classroom through Edmodo
• Again use your blog as a communicative tool both with your students and their parents.

Conclusion: Blogging seems like a useful tool that could be a fun and an engaging challenge for my students. I feel that it is not my top choice as a communication tool for my students and parents.  It is something I would like to try out in a near future, but I am not expecting it to revolutionize my teaching.  On Kaily's made up scale from 1 to 10, ten being: I MUST try this next week, I would give blogging a 5. 

Thanks to these websites for giving me some ideas!

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-guide-to-use-of-blogs-in.html

http://edublogs.org/10-ways-to-use-your-edublog-to-teach/

http://thanhnguyen75.blogspot.ca/2006/11/use-of-blogs-in-education_14.html