Picture courtesy of Microsoft Office OnlineEducational uses for blogs
As we all know, the ways of communication that were used in the past are reforming to all these new forms of technology. Blogging is one of these new technology advances that offer many opportunities within education. Flierl (2007) describes the online communications as an “online journal” or “web log”.
Blogging can be used in many different aspects but one major aspect is using blogging when it comes to education. Personally I have not had any experience using blogs besides but now that I have started, I believe my horizons for blogging are going to expand greatly. I began researching all the uses of blogging within education and I happen to find a lot of different uses.
Blogging can offer a type of course, classroom, or school management system. Weblogs can contain course information that the teacher wants to share about their class. These blogs simply open new doors in forms of communication between the teacher, student, and parent. They also allow your class to communicate with another class somewhere else in the world.
Many blog tools are being used to create an ongoing portfolio of samples of student writing. On-line journals are allowing students to express their own opinions on topics that are being discussed in class and potentially opening new doors of discussion on the topic at hand. To facilitate discussion, blogging allows students to write comments, opinions, or questions posed.
As a kindergarten teacher, I am currently not using blogs in my classroom but if I were to teach maybe 2nd grade or up I would use blogging as a writing center in my classroom. There are endless amounts of opportunities blogging has to offer in the classroom.
References
Davies, J. & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Flierl, R., & Fowler, H. (2007). Educational uses of blogs and wikis. Phi Delta Kappa, 89(3), C3. Retrieved on January 4, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/pss/20442460
I wonder if kindergarten students could do a blog with images illustrating all their favorite vocabulary words for the week. They could find the images on Flickr. Just curious. Great post.
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