Friday, September 10, 2010

Mod 2 - Blog Post 1

Over the past year I have become more familiar with blogger and its uses in the classroom. Richardson covered three of the ways I see myself using blogger in my future classroom. The most practical use of blogger for myself is as a tool to create a classroom/school website. As a teacher I can easily post pictures, information, links, or whatever my heart desires on my blogger. I have two websites I have created for graduate classes and I plan on using them as templates for my future classroom website. I can then use my website to as Richardson puts it "expand the walls of the classroom (p.27)." I can post all of my classroom materials using blogger, I can post assignments, and I can create links using google docs. As far as standards are concerned a classroom website can cover all five social studies learning standards and key ideas. For example I can create a geography lesson using blogger where I can link various types of maps in a webquest that would cover the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical settings (including natural resources), human systems, environment and society, and the use of geography. (Adapted from The National Geography Standards, 1994: Geography for Life). I can have students explore these different elements and fill out some type of questionnaire or write an essay. This is just a start.

A second and third use that I see blogger being used in my classroom as an e-portfolio and collaborative space. I group the two together because I see my students posting their work on blogger than as part of an assignment have to edit, help, provide resources to their fellow students work. This can really cover any standard and any key idea for social studies. For example if a student is working on an essay he can post it on his/her blogger where 1 or 2 of his/her fellow students will be required to do some sort of peer review, editing and offer useful references or information on that student's work. If a student were working a project/paper on American History about the Industrial Revolution this type of work would cover Social Studies Standard 1 and Key Idea 2 : investigate key events and developments and major turning points in world history to identify the factors that brought about change and the long-term effects of these changes. Not to mention it might help on that regents exam at the end of the year.

4 comments:

  1. You have some good ideas in your post, but I'm not sure that your use of the word "blogger" is clear. Blogger is just one web service that publishes blogs. There are others such as Word Press and Edublogger. Are you perhaps using the Blogger when you mean blog?
    Also having students give each other feedback on things is a good idea, but if the students have individual blogs, others can not edit their work. This could, however, be done if they are working together on a document in Googledocs, for example.
    Dr. Burgos

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  2. I love your idea of using a blog for an e-portfolio. As a new special ed teacher I think it is sometimes difficult to collect physical student work that they are completing in their content area classrooms. By using a blog I can digitally post assignments by taking pictures or uploading written assignments.

    I also love your idea about assigning peer editing on the blog. I think peer evaluation is extremely useful in a classroom and forces students to offer constructive criticism to their peers, while also being forced to identify positive attributes that their peer demonstrated within their work. Similar to our situation now, had we not been assigned to read our classmates' blogs I may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to others ideas and creativity.

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  3. I really like the idea of having not just a school website but a classroom one. I think that is a fantastic way for parents to view the progress of their students; kind of like an open house all year long! I think that would put parents at ease, especially knowing how teenagers are with telling parents things!
    While reading Richardson I too liked the idea of creating e-portfolios. The idea seems so practical, there is no way for students to come up with excuses ie my folder is in my locker, to gain some more time.

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  4. I liked your idea that you would use blogs as an” information bank” and you can access it whenever you want. You do not have to share it with others, but you can do so if you want. That is a useful way of keeping class materials (most of which are found online recently) in that you can see them at glance and access the website at once.
    Plus, I like what Richardson says; it can "expand the walls of the classroom." Blogs might be able to facilitate teachers’ work and enhance students’ learning process, even if we cannot access UBlearns anymore.

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