Blogging in the Elementary School Classroom is something that has always been intriguing to me. It makes me wonder if students at this age are mature enough to blog on their one. While searching the internet I read an article titled Blogging With Elementary School Students. This was a very interesting article that talked about giving students the opportunity to blog about topics relevant to their weekly instruction. "Blogging is one way of linking writing, reading, and connecting information and learning together." It seems the perfect venue to introduce elementary school students to the online world world of networked learning.This is so true. With the advance in technology, blogs, and social networking from day to day it is important that students learn how to use these sites at school. In about 4th through 6th grade (10-12 year olds), students discover social network places such as Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. They are interested in these social sites because of older siblings, friends, and neighbors. Because of the hype of these websites they long to be part of that network to chat, upload and comment on each others’ photos. "Now is the time for us educators to expose them to safe practices AND to academic uses of online spaces."
This article also talks about a teacher who encouraged blogging in her classroom. She created a classroom blog. Each student was allowed to create a user name and password. This gave students the opportunity to leave comments on posts that she created. The students are not required to write, they want to. This provided students with an increase in motivation when it came to writing.
I believe that this is something positive that teachers can do with their students. It provides them with experience when it comes to blogging. This also helps to motivate students and help them to enjoy writing. Growing up I was not a big fan of writing, but their were times when my teachers made writing fun by trying new activities. This gave me needed motivation because this made writing interesting to me... All and all I think this was a great article and concept.
Tolisano, S., (2008) Blogging with elementary school students. Retrieved from http://langwitches.org/blog/2008/12/23/blogging-with-elementary-school-students/
You wrote, “I am also sure that my students, parents, and administration have searched my name as well.” I thought about students and parents Googling my name as well, but I did not think about my administration doing so. I think this is a very important point you brought up. It would make sense for administration to look up their employees before they hire them and every once in a while after they are working for them. They could look up possible employees before hiring them to learn more about their personalities. They are probably also looking them up to see what parents and students will find if they look them up. I’m glad you brought this to my attention because it is important to remember this so that we can make sure our online identities are what we want our administration to be seeing.
ReplyDelete“But honestly I was surprised that those were the only pages that came up and it took pages and pages of searching to find those. I have created wiki, curriculum, and website pages for other classes that I was not able to find.” The same thing happened to me. Most of my information was accurate, but my blogs, wiki, and website did not come up either. I even tried my first and last name not in quotes so that it did not have to find it together, but it still did not come up.
“It also showed me that if I want my parents and students to be able to find accurate information about me, I should provide it myself.” I completely agree with this statement. I wrote that I learned almost the exact same thing. You can’t rely on other sources to get the information about you out there. If you want the information to be valuable to students and parents, then you have to put it out there yourself!