When I first started thinking about the idea of using blogging as an instructional tool, because I teach English, my mind immediately went to novels. I love studying novels with my 7th and 8th graders. One of my favorite things is hearing their reactions and opinions about the story. When I have class discussions, I usually don't get too many students who really want to share. I am constantly pulling teeth to get students to respond.
If I had students blog their reactions and feelings about the novel, I would get more responses. Students would be able to post responses to prompts and then leave each other comments. This would enhance my lessons because discussions would be a lot more in depth and would not be constrained by classroom time. Also, I think many students would have more to share because they would have had time to formulate what they want to say rather than coming up with something on the spot in class. I think blogs are a great way to make classroom discussions deeper and more meaningful.
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Matt,
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that I can come up with as a concern for making blogging part of a class is, I worry about students that are not good writers. I myself am one of those people and would have worried a great deal knowing that my classmates were going to be reading my work. I think you are on the right track for incorperating blogging into your class. Good luck with it.
Hi Matt,
ReplyDeleteBlogging and novels would be an excellent combination. I believe you are right when you say that the discussions would be more in depth, due in part to the freedom from the time constraint of the classroom. Assuming you use novels that are somewhat well known, would you be concerned about students plagiarizing others comments/thought about the novel? Do you use something similar to turnitin.com? The only other concern I can thing of is to ask how you would handle the student who fears public scrutiny of their work? For every student who would flourish with the assignment, there would be one who cringes at the thought of others reading their work. (Twenty years ago that student would have been me!) Lastly, for every assignment that has to do with students using technology outside of the classroom, how do you address those that do not have easy access to computer use. For many of us that seems hard to imagine, but I have a handful of students in each class that don't have this access that most of us now take for granted. All in all I expect that you'll have much success with this plan. I hope to hear how this implementation works so that I can glean some insight for my blogging plans.
Hi, Matt!
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if starting with an entire novel is a good idea. As Richardson (2009)suggests,starting small can act as a form of scaffolding that is apt to serve both you and your students well. Perhaps you could just use your initial blog with a short story, an individual chapter from a novel, or a particular quote from assigned readings that might prompt discussion.
I am also torn between diving in too fast/deep and having enough patience with my own learning to build toward success.
Good luck!
Trina
References
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Boy, I think Amy pretty much covered many of my same concerns about your idea for blogging, still a great idea nonetheless. I would worry about the authenticity of students work too. The abundance of comments on novels are out there at their finger tips and who is to say that they will not stumble across them to get an easy grade. They of course would have to put in the research time to do this, however it is still frowned upon. Blogging will promote shy and unwilling participants who normally do not participate in class to come out of their shells. As with all of our peers, blogging can not be fully implemented until everyone has the access and capability to learn and use it routinely.
ReplyDeleteMy concerns are similar. I am wondering if starting with a novel is a good idea for 7th and 8th graders. I will make a suggestion - this is something I plan to do in my own classroom. We are reading short stories and, as always, I really emphasize using the reading strategies of predict, connect, visualize, question, clarify, and evaluate. My thoughts are that you could have them choose one or two of these strategies that they were able to use during reading. For example, they might say, "I was really able to connect with this part of the story because it reminded me of ...", or "I could truly visualize this part of the story, I saw ... in my mind's eye." This doesn't involve a ton of critical thinking quite yet, but it's small, it's safe, and it makes the post personal. Just a suggestion. Let me know what you come up with.
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