I teach eighth grade, early United States History. Being new to blogging as an educational tool, I thought I would first create an assignment for students that I already give. I have students do a current events assignment every other week in my class. In this way students would do something differently and have students do different things at the same time. One of the purposes is to show that the people from the past had similar issues. The issues that people struggle with are not new, just different. I will post current events links to the blog and allow the students to have a choice of what they want to blog about. This is still in the infancy stage and I will have to work with the district to allow it. This would be a no brainer as students can not only access text but video of an event making it more interactive and realistic to their way of viewing the world. This makes blogging a “democratic tool” which will differentiate and empower students (Richardson) I thought to begin with I could choose issues and give prompts for students write to and respond. Eventually I would want students to seek out and submit their own current events issues. My first teaching issue is how to get students to use correct etiquette and write to the “world audience”. A second issue would be how to assess and grade the work. Any suggestions?
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Assessment and grading would definitely be a challange to both you and your students. The first few times that you do this, I am sure students will be all over the map in their abilities. One good way to overcome this problem is to have a detailed rubric of what you will be looking for and a points breakdown for each item. Having scaffolded examples of various levels of proficiency for students to look at and possibly assign grades to will also give them a better idea of your expectations. It is very time consuming to begin with, but worth it when you go to use the lesson again next year. Hope this helps...
ReplyDeleteMr. Shay,
ReplyDeleteYou hit on a few key points in your suggestions for the use of blogs in our classrooms that I think are essential for all of us to follow in our blogging quest. You stated that eventually you would leave the responsibility in the hands of the students to seek out the current events as to which they are going to comment on. Secondly I think your idea about students first blog that is focused towards the proper etiquette that is expected while blogging to the world is excellent.
In response to your closing question, I agree with Rebecca about a rubric being utilized for grading along with some solid examples of the types of works that are expected for each grade achieved.
Good Luck
Paul Harvey