New waves of technology have greatly assisted in this
current generation being able to keep up with more and more people from the
ease and comfort of your own home. One of these trending modes of technological
communications is the blog. A blog is basically an online journal that can be
written by one person, or many and can include pictures, music, links, and
pretty much whatever a person wants to be included. This blogging craze can
impact all sorts of lines of work, including that of the field of education. Blogs
can be used to help teachers, students, parents, and faculty interact and learn
from each other in this online community. I will discuss how blogs can help
education in a fifth grade setting between teachers, students, parents, and
coworkers.
Firstly, communication between students and teachers is
crucial and as generations are progressing, online communication is becoming
more necessary. How often does a student
go home from a lesson thinking that they fully grasp the concept, but then come
time to do their homework, everything that they had learned that day seemed to
have left? Well now there is a solution!
With a simple laptop with a web cam, a
video can be recorded and uploaded to the blog in almost no time at all, or
perhaps uploading step by step instructions, so it would be simple to relearn
what they were taught, helping the children be able to complete their homework.
One thing that is great about the blogging is that the students would able to
comment on the posts and you may be better able to survey where it is that the
students are struggling, because they are writing about it in the moment of the
frustrations, not just trying to remember what was hard from the night
before. A blog can help out a 5th
grade classroom, is uploading the homework assignments themselves. Often
students return home having not written down what pages and numbers their
homework was on, and in just a few hours the homework is as good as forgotten.
Well, it is quite easy to access a blog and they can now easily look up what it
was that they are supposed to be doing for the evening.
Not only would a blog help students keep up with their
homework, but it could also be used as a tool to unify the class outside of the
classroom. It has been shown that children of this generation wildly enjoy
social media interaction. Depending on privacy settings, the children can have
rights to post on some or all of the blog, making it a private group that the
students can share things with each other whether it is thoughts, interests, or
curriculum related discussion, it makes it more interesting and “cool” for the
students. Also, it may give students more motivation to be involved in class
activities. If they know that the pictures from an activity will later be
posted for the whole class to see online, it gives them more incentive to look
interested and be involved which will in turn make them more interested and
more involved.
The usage of Blogs in a classroom, would not only affect
the student-teacher interaction, but also that of communication with the
parents. Though there are back to school nights and parent-teacher conferences
to give the parents an idea of what their students are being taught, only so
much can be covered in such a little amount of time. On a blog, a teacher can
post curriculum and objectives in detail, so that parents can have a full
understanding of what their children are being taught. Concerns of parents can
be discussed and addressed. A blog is a
great way to create a sense of community for the parents of the students, in
many cases parents do not meet or interact with the other parents, but this
gives them an online setting to get to know each other and learn more about the
other students and student’s parents. It is a great way to keep parents updated
on their children as well. As mentioned before, the teacher can post homework
on the blog, which can help keep the parents keep their children on task. You
may even be able to include supplemental learning exercises, so that a parent
may help a student keep ahead of the curve and get a preview learning
objectives. Finally, it is a social media unit for the parents about their
children. They also can get on and look at pictures posted of their children to
see the activities that they are participating in.
Finally, I feel that a blog could help teacher stay in
touch and keep up with other teachers. Every so often teachers go to
conferences to find out the latest innovations, methods, and ideas for
teaching. With blogging, any teacher can keep up with any other teacher around
the world who is also blogging. Lesson plans, activities, curriculum can all be
shared with just a few clicks. This is huge because it creates a support group
for teachers, not only within their, school, within, their district, or even
state, it has the potential for worldwide communication, which is wildly huge,
because it can help mainstream and unify public education nationwide.
As expressed above, blogging can wildly improve a
classroom setting. It provides visual and technological communication amongst
students and teachers, teachers and parents, and teachers with other teachers.
It is a great creative way to share learning, and even more importantly it
creating a community amongst these people.
Pictures from the class can easlily be added to show off what's happening
Personal Videos and Videos from youtube can be embedded into the post
For examples of teacher blogs, see link below:
