I have been thinking and talking about blogging for a few years now. I have taught second grade, and blogged with the kids, both on my teacher blog and them on their blogs. As a Coetail student I blogged as a requirement (5 posts per unit), and enjoyed the process, even though it was a requirement.
In our Middle School I have been approached by a couple of teachers who would like to explore blogging with me. They had questions such as
“How can I make things so that the kids are excited to blog?”
“How should I assess their blogposts?”
“Who is going to read these student posts, really?”
All of these wonderings I share with them, and want to explore myself.
There are several benefits of blogging that I believe in:
- Regardless of the scope of your audience, writing reflectively about your experiences can help you to draw a focus on your ideas and to synthesize your thinking from an alternative perspective.
- Once a student makes contact with an audience that she cares about, and knows that she is writing for an engages readership, motivating her to express her ideas becomes unnecessary. She will write.
- A student blog that carries over a number of years is an impressive and wonderful (as in it leaves me full of wonder) record of a child’s journey as a learner.
I am gathering friends and fellow educators who have experience with student blogs, and I an trying to sort through these questions and issues. Please leave a comment, or join our Google Plus community dedicated to this exploration.
