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Good Morning...


Please be gentle today.
I am a little nervous.
I've only been doing this teaching thing for 3 months after all.

Why Blog?

More specifically: why, as a teacher, would I want to incorporate blogging in my classroom?

The number one reason for incorporating blogging into your classes is engagement!  Blogging provides students with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and understanding of topics they're actually interested in (within reason of course!).

Other benefits of having students blog include giving students an assignment that lets them produce world-facing material, and giving students additional writing practice (creating better writers which is arguable one of the most important skills for academic success).

Obstacles for Teachers

When it comes to incorporating blogging into the classroom, there are a number of obstacles that teachers must overcome.  The following are common concerns voiced by educators when talking about incorporating blogging into their classrooms:

"I'm afraid of technobobbles and gigaboozles!  I don't know how to blog and certainly don't know how to incorporate blogging into my classes!"

That's why we're here today!  We'll learn how to create a simple blog post using Blogger and talk about ways to incorporate blogs into the classroom.

"I don't know what makes a good blog!"

No problem, we can ramp up pretty quickly by looking at some great blogs and leaning on the experience of people who have blogged a lot and have incorporated blogs into their classrooms

Your Mission:

1. First, let's take a look at some posts found in

• OKCupid's OKTrends  

• The Everywhereist

2.  Now using the comment function below (pencil looking thingy),

• Discuss what they have in common. 
• Hints: look at visual format, content (even when skimming)

When You Are Finished Please Let Me Know!
  

"But the marking!"

Life is marking, isn't it? :)  We have worked on refining a blog marking rubric, which we will provide for you, as-is, free of charge.  You may use and modify this as you need. 

Another option: peer-reviewed blogs.  To mark a blog took me on average 15 minutes (if you were providing useful feedback to the students).  I decided to introduce peer-marked blogs.  This is really a whole other topic, but here are the highlights:

• a really well-defined, easy to use rubric is necessary
• a peer-review training system helps teach students what makes a good blog
• peer-review substantially reduced the required marking time

Benefits of peer review: greatly reduced marking time, more learning for students (marking and writing)
Detriments: on average higher grades given and less constructive comments

Obstacles for Students

Teachers aren't the only ones with obstacles to overcome: students often have a tough time writing blogs.  It's not always in the students' comfort zone (especially for students that don't consider themselves "good writers").  There are ways teachers can help!

Topic choice

In our experience, one of the things that students find most challenging about blogging in education is coming up with the topic for their blog post.

Group activity: brainstorming blogging topics.

Writing is hard!

We recognize that for a lot of students writing is hard!  Writing a blog is no different.  Yes, students get to be more opinionated and are encouraged to write in the first person, but writing a well-structured thoughtful blog takes time, patience and practice. 

LET'S GET BLOGGIN'