Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Blogging in Class
The more I think about it, blogging is an excellent form of communication with my students. This is the information age. Teenagers love anything that has to do with the latest technology. I have been thinking about ways that I can use blogging in my math classes. One idea is that I can pose a problem and have students answer in their comments. The first one to post a correct response could get a prize of some sort. I also could pose thought provoking questions such as asking about their future goals. Providing links to Internet searches and having them comment about their findings is another idea. I am exploring my possibilities. I would like to start a blog with my classes this semester. Has anyone had an experience with blogging with their students?
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Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYou are right that students like anything that has to do with technology. I use blogs as a way to "trick" the students into writing.
I like your idea of first response wins a prize, because that is one downside of posting a problem/question on a blog. If a student doesn't know, they can just look at someone else's answer. I have found a work-a-round for this however. I use Blogger with my students, but I have set up all comments to be moderated before they go live. This way students cannot look at someone else's post before writing their own. Once I have everyone's post, I go ahead and mass publish them. So far it has worked out great.
Monitoring comments is a great idea. That way I can also make sure all comments are appropriate. I try to make my students write in math in a journal. I think blogging will be more interesting for them.
ReplyDeleteHi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteWhat would you do if a student did not have access to the Internet or a computer outside the school building? I remember making a lesson in which students needed computer access. I spent days getting ready for it, but could only get our one computer lab for two days. I condensed the lesson down to what I thought was a two-day lesson and wouldn't you know we needed three (probably four now that I think of it) days of lab time. I told the students they would have to use time outside of class. I think I heard every reason possible for the 50% of the students that couldn't get it done. No Internet access, no transportation to the library or before school. What would your plan be for the student who couldn't get it done when you had requested? Just want to hear others' stories about these problems. I teach in a school with 40% students being free/reduced so technology at home is often a problem.
One solution I used for this is to bring students in during lunch time. When I do this, one of two things usually happens. The first is they get it done on their own so they do not miss their social time (then I talk to them about their story of why it was not done in the first place) or they actually come in for their lunch time to work on it. It does take my lunch tiem away, but if I want the work, it is worth it in my opinion.
Mr. Barger, you bring up very good points. I work in a school with a very high percentage of free and reduced lunch.(around 70%) However, many of the students have cell phones. I believe that I would have to survey the students ahead of time to see who had access at home. I know that many of them talk about having a My Space and Facebook page. Those sites are blocked at school, so I know they have to have access somehow. I could also come up with an alternate assignment for those
ReplyDeletewho do not have internet service. Perhaps, I could, like you, allow computer lab time during class. I would not be able to use lunch time
because of duty, but I can offer them a day after school that I would stay and let them use the computers. I stay on Wednesday every week for extra help, so I can make computer time an extension of that.
I have had many ideas that I realized later needed a backup plan. Once, I planned a survey at another school where I taught. The survey, in which we were going to draw statistical conclusions, had to do with how many hours they watched TV in a week. The experiment bombed when I found out that most of them hardly ever watched TV. I should have known being that it was a small rural town with no cable.