What Makes A Blog, A Blog?

Blogs are great tools to incorporate into a classroom. But there are many things to think about before incorporating this kind of tool. Private or not private? That is the question. I think it's important to share blogs. When dealing with older students (middle school and above) if you keep the blog private you are just sheltering them for the real world. Allowing them to share their work with whomever would like to read it will help give them a dose of reality, if people respond. As students grow and in order for students to grow they need to be exposed to criticism and what others think. If we shelter students we are setting them up for failure.

Reflection is an important piece to the learning process. Blogs serve as a fantastic tool for students to reflect about what they have learned that day or week in class. Blogs allow the quiet student who rarely talks in class to have a voice. It allows all students to think about what they've learned, in addition to being tested. Memorizing and regurgitating the information is easy, but actually digesting it and letting it settle is what we strive for our students to do with the information we throw at them. A blog can help channel those thoughts and help in retaining the knowledge.

No matter what you do with students there are always concerns. Are they going to like it? Will they actually put in effort? Will it turn out the way I hope? Going into anything, especially for the first time, it's important to set up some grounds rules, so that everyone knows what is expected. Examples are always a good way to show the students an exemplary response, a good response, and even a bad response. Showing what "to do" and what "not to do" are great ways to showing students what you are and are not looking for from them. By laying out rules and having consequences to violating those rules prior to blogging is necessary to having a successful experience.

Blogs can take your classroom to a whole other level. If you implement them properly, writing integration and reflection can become a daily or weekly assignment in a class. Not only helping students to learn the content better, but maybe even help them with understanding how they learn themselves.