I am an 8th grade Social Studies teacher in Colorado. I am very excited to use my blog page for classroom activities. My idea of how to use my blog page for class would be to set up a weekly critical thinking question about the past week's lessons. I would ask my honor's students and any other student wishing for a challenge to participate. An example of the question would be: "Who was Andrew Jackson?" I would ask for my students to answer each weekly question using their own thoughts and supporting details. I also hope they would respond to their classmates ideas in a positive way.
I would also like to use my page for enrichment activities. My students could check out my page filled with links and ideas for research on specific topics. I want to think of the page as extra for student experts. Blogs are a very good tool for hooking the digital learner into a subject they may not be very interested in learning about in the traditional manner.
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Chris,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement about hooking "digital learners." What I've found to be most interesting when using my blog in the area of social studies is that it allows the students to use an alternative venue to express ideas that he/she really don't want to share in the classroom. History class tends to have negative connotations associated with it. To be honest I teach history and I sometimes find myself falling into the mindset when teaching certain topics in my American History II class.
Showing students that there can be and is a connection between today and the past pushes students to stretch his/her thinking. "Really, can all these dead people in our history books really have an impact on our lives in 2009?!" Of course we know that there is a connection but showing our students is a huge challenge.
The fact that you want to use your blog as an extended learning opportunity will challenge students to take responsibility for his/her learning and be active in the work you post on your blog. Something that you might want to checkout is Diigo. It is a public bookmarking web page that allows people to highlight and annotate web pages and share the pages with others. If you've used it or have worked with it you know what I'm talking about, if not I think you might want to explore its uses.
You talked about using links and ideas for research, what might be interesting is to send your students to websites that you have bookmarked and annotated, have them read the same information and then comment on your notes or have them create questions for classmates, questions for you, etc. This will give you a way to guide your students' searches and actively participate in creating things for classmates to read and write about as well. Although I haven't had the opportunity to try this idea out, I hope to get this type of thing going with both my high end learners and my IEP students.
Just for fun, I will actually annotate your blog page so that I can show you what I'm talking about. You should be receiving an invitation to Diigo in your Walden email account. If you probably won't be able to see the highlighting and notes without becoming a member, it's free, easy, and rather addicting.
Thank you for sharing your ideas!
Courtney
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea to use blogging as an enrichment and challenge for your students. I'm not sure if you use it as extra credit, but if you did that would help to work around the idea that not all students have Internet access. Those that do can do the extra credit and those that don't can either find time during school to do the extra credit or not and it won't affect their grade negatively. My only concern is with the question that you used as an example. I'm not sure if all of your questions are similar, but the question "Who was Andrew Jackson?" I think does not lend for much discussion or critical thinking.
Great ideas!
Amber
I had a similar idea posted on my blog were I would post math problems for the students to try to solve. Also if the kids are commenting on how to answer a question the other students in the class can use thier post to find the anser to solve the question by themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think your idea of using it to encourage discussion is a good one. I would suggest maybe using it for more topics geared toward debate though so it encourages more diverse answers. Students could visit other sites you suggest to find supporting facts or evidence (and then cite their sources). I think more open-ended questions would inspire more discussion than a simple Who is question.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of using it as a place to publish other news and events of interest and I plan to do that with mine as well.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI think that using your blog for an enrichment resourse is a great idea. My school is very enrichment/remediation oriented and everyday for 30 minutes we switch classes depending on which students need enrichment on a certain concept and which students need remediation and a little extra help.
My fear with using a blog in general though is that not all students have computers or internet at home. I teach in a more lower socio-economic area where that is a really a problem. Maybe giving them a chance to get on in the library to answer the questions would still give them the opportunity to participate in the blog.