Blogging Opens New Learning Possibilities

Catch teens enjoying social media tools and help them gear that spark toward learning and growth! Since teens are savvy Internet users, it makes sense to have them interact with teens from other schools and experts in knowledge fields to enhance skills in high school subjects. As teens exchange knowledge, information and ideas with peers and others through weblog, they can stimulate literacy skills and higher cognitive thinking. Consider weblogs as the means...

Blogging helps encourage teen writing, according to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project study. Interestingly according to the survey findings, 82 percent of students "believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class." It makes sense then that teachers use blogs as a way to stir students' writing skills.

"For a group of my English literature students," teacher Will Richardson notes, "the latest buzz in educational technology began with bees. I had my class read The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin, 2003), then offered a new way to create dialog around the book with literary weblogs.

Richardson adds these insights about the success of using blogs....

The "blogs" are gaining traction in education as an online forum for classroom discussion, and to develop students' critical thinking, writing, and reading comprehension skills. Here at HCRHS, they have even more reach. For instance, my lit students created an online reader study guide for Bees, using the weblog format. In two years, the site Weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees has had more than 2 million hits, including a 2,300-word response from the book's author, Sue Monk Kidd.

The weblog traffic has since grown to encompass different students and schools, making it clear to our students that others are reading and learning from their work. This "sense of audience" gets students excited, and helps to facilitate discussion, debate, and participation, even among reticent students. Blogs also motivate students to become more engaged in reading, think more deeply about the meaning of their writing, and submit higher quality work.

Richardson advocates using blogging software for "advantages in control, security and functionality. We license Manila, a content management system from Userland.com (manila.userland.com). A $499 annual license lets us build as many blogs as our server can hold (up to 2,000), and we can navigate between an open audience (a blogging benefit), versus security and privacy (to keep our students safe)." While other brands are certainly available, teachers want to know possible options when security is an issue.

Blogging can improve student writing skills when teachers facilitate students to connect these meaningfully to content. "As students engage new tasks they enhance literacy skills," Rebecca Weinstein notes. Many texts can be used... such as magazine articles, book excerpts, poetry, news articles, recipes, song lyrics and others they locate. Even cartoons can represent bigger ideas. And today students can create digital videos on investigative themes.

Weblogs offer new opportunities in language teaching and create additional spaces to teach a target language beyond the classroom context. Some points which language teachers must consider (e.g. time devotion, students’ privacy, the Internet access, etc…), but it is nevertheless worth using the technology as an efficient way to promote autonomous learning in educational settings.

Amazing possibilities open in science through student weblogs. For instance,

Biopac Science Lab allows High School students to display, record, and analyze data from their own bodies. This approach promotes scientific inquiry and student participation and engages student minds to develop critical thinking skills through real and exciting lab experiences. The software includes a series of guided science lessons for students to record and analyze their own heart signals (ECG), brain waves (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and eye movement (EOG). Lessons support national science standards and easily align with Biology textbooks. The system includes detailed lesson plans that guide the student through self-paced and independent investigative experiments.

Business administration, political science, journalism and philosophy are enriched through student experiences with weblogs according to recent research in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. "Liberal learning depends on students taking responsibility for their education. Instructors in any discipline can use blogs to begin conversations about course materials before students arrive in the classroom and continue them long after a class has ended, thus fostering a sense of active learning both inside and outside the classroom," the researchers conclude.

Blogs are a means to enhance many many math skills in practical ways. "In math the emphasis has shifted from teaching rules and procedures," reflects Jamie Tubbs, "to helping students create their own understanding of the mathematics they are learning. To do this, students must be active and engaged, reasoning through problems, justifying answers, and communicating their understanding to others." Student blogs include...

Traditional writing activities such as journals, learning logs, and math autobiographies are all possible on a blog. But blogs also allow users to incorporate links, images, audio, video, spreadsheets, graphs, linear and nonlinear patterns into posts, increasing the potential for creative project-based learning.

Podcasting is just one way music students can enhance performance. Opportunities are open to add digital backgrounds to their performance. These can be shared online with a wider audience.

While many teachers may face teen disengagement in class due to too much teacher talk or boring PowerPoint presentations, student blogging with a focus in your subject area, is one possibility to engage and empower teens as they learn.

What lesson suggestions do you have for your subject area? Your ideas and suggestions will help start a tool chest for others.