Week Ten: HOT Blogging

This week I read the article “HOT Blogging” by Lisa Zawilinski. When I think about incorporating blogs into my classroom I also worry that my students’ interest will fade. As with any learning activity that is going to be used over time, teachers need to think of ways to keep students’ interested. Blogs are important to incorporate because they allow for literacies to continue outside the classroom. They create a bridge between school and home. They provide an authentic audience for students because the entries they post will be seen by classmates, other peers, and anyone else who accesses the blog site. This is similar to the blogs we post for this class because our peers read what we post as well as our teachers. It is more personal than writing in a bluebook during class and gives students’ ownership.

All of the teachers at my school have a class website through the school that serves as a classroom news blog that is mentioned in the article. They post homework and assignments on the site for parents to see as well as students. I think the type of blog I would use the most in my classroom is literature response blogs. I would have students write an entry based on the day’s reading or the reading they were going to do for homework. It would get the students involved with the reading outside of school. The prompts I used would be critical thinking questions to promote higher order thinking.

One idea from this article I really liked was having students include posts about their outside of class reading. Often times in school students have to give book talks on their independent reading books. I have seen this many times at my internship and it is a requirement for students to stand up and orally present a summary of a book and their rating of it. I think it is good to have students do this but I frequently see their peers disinterested during the presentations. Perhaps an alternative or a supplement to this could be having students blog about the book. It would give them a chance to craft their summary and opinion of the book without the pressures of an oral presentation. They could also include multimedia resources on the blog like pictures, clips, and interviews. To get students to review each other’s summaries and look at the blogs a teacher could require students to read and review another’s choice. For example, first trimester all the students would select their own independent reading book and write a blog post review. For the next trimester the teacher could have students read their classmate’s reviews and based off of them select a book to read and write their own review. They could relate back to the original review and say whether they had a similar or different opinion and whether their rating was the same or not. This would allow students to reflect on other’s posts and synthesize new comments and ideas.

Overall I think teachers need to consider using blogs because they provide so many opportunities for enrichment outside of the classroom. Although it may seem like a daunting task they are easy to set up and user friendly. The article includes many types of blogs that can be used in a variety of classrooms not just Language Arts.