Blogging In the Classroom

In my 5th grade classroom, I think it would be a great idea to create a blog for my students to share their thoughts and opinions about books they are reading and/or concepts they are learning in math, science, social studies, etc.  I think it would be important to allow students to express themselves in a variety of ways, so I would not want to limit them to only written blogs.  I would want for them to be able to express their opinions (or reviews) in the form of a video, a glog, a picture, a podcast, an animation, and/or an audio recording.  I have been working in collaboration with members from my T3 grant group and we are all very excited about not only creating such an environment for our students, but linking our students in a safe online community with other learners across the country and maybe even around the globe.  Although our plans are still in their infancy, we are all very excited about this idea and we are looking forward to seeing our plan in action!

Another thing that I think would be helpful to my 5^th graders is a homework helper type blog.  In this blog, I would ask my students to post questions they have when they need help with an assignment they do not understand.  I would instruct my students that this wouldn’t be a place for them to exchange answers, rather, it would be a place for them to help one another to better understand concepts.  For example, if a student was having trouble remembering how to use lattice to solve a multi-digit multiplication problem, they could post a question on the blog and another student or students could answer their blog with helpful tips.  Also, this would be very useful for students who are absent.  They could post a blog asking about what we did in school that day and classmates could help keep absent students up to date with the concepts being learned that day in class.