Blogging - reflective learning

Why Blog?

Image from twitter.com

Will Richardson (2010) describes the potential learning that takes place with blogging in this way: 

"Blogging can teach critical reading and writing skills, and it can lead to greater information management skills. It can help students become much more media and information literate by clarifying the choices they make about the content they write about, it can teach them about how networks function - both human and computer - and it can teach the essential skills of collaboration" (37). 

This reflection on personal learning can have profound, positive consequences. 

If you would like to start blogging with your class, it is a good idea to start small (Richardson, 45-46):

• Get students to read some model blogs
• let students respond to posts on your class blog - perhaps pose a simple question they can respond to
• use small groups to create blogs
• work your way up to individual blogging, with clear expectations of what should/shouldn't be included

Realizing that staying safe online is a priority (Kist, 2010, 55), one simple, secure, and free site to use with your class is kidblog.org

Image from kidblog.org

Once you have created a class account, you can create the look of your blog from provided templates.  

You can add new students to the class list:

You can add posts/topics/questions that students can respond to:

You have the ability to preview any comments before they are submitted to the blog: 

You can keep track of any student activity that happens in the blog:

If you are unfamiliar with blogging, I would suggest that you start experimenting with your own blog first. This blog was developed using blogger.com, which is a simple, yet versatile way to begin your blogging adventures. Try adding hyperlinks, inserting images/video, or try embedding a document from your adventures with animoto. Once you are familiar with the navigation aspects of a blog, you will have a better understanding of how to set up a blog with your students.
This positive learning environment will take your students to a new, reflective-learning level!