Saturday, May 11, 2013

Chapter 2: Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts

I found Chapter 2 to be quite interesting.  As an English teacher, I require many writing assignments in my class.  Even in my short five years of teaching, I've seen a huge change in the way I teach my classes and the technology I use to conduct lessons and assignments.  When I began teaching in 2008, I used an "old school" overhead projector!  Currently, I'm using a SMARTboard, a portable laptop station, a document camera, and response clickers!  Technology at my school has advanced quickly and I feel that using blogs would continue this trend.

Now that my classroom has a portable laptop station, it will be much easier to incorporate blogging into my lessons.  Students love posting their ideas to the internet and getting feedback from their peers.  Richardson states, "I will never forget the first time I posted my opinion, and the first time someone responded to it" (17).  There are many instances in my class where students could use blogging to get ideas for writing and to "bounce" ideas off of each other OUTSIDE of the classroom.

The biggest plus I saw about using blogs in the classroom was the fact that it will give my quite students a voice.  Blogs are tools "that support different learning styles"( 27).  Everyone has a voice and blogs allow the students that are quite in class, to express their thoughts.

I am going to make it a goal to use blogs in my class next year.


Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand                  Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2010. Print.


Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. UnknownMay 11, 2013 at 2:38 PM

    Brenda - I absolutely agree with your comment that blogs give students a voice. Sometimes students are afraid to speak up in class, but they are fine with post their thoughts on the computer.

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, I'm not sure after our last class wiki discussion) my school district has a web filter that blocks us from using blogs. We do use internet software called MyBigCampus that has a discussion feature. This is similar to a blog, and I do use it for those purposes. I give students a topic to reflect on and ask for their thoughts and collaboration of thoughts with peers. It works very well, and I receive a lot of feedback about assignments.

    Also, isn't it amazing how much the classroom has changed in just 5 years? It's great to hear that you have a plethora of technology available for your students!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)