Blogging is a digital activity with great educational value for students. In addition to developing some of the key multimedia skills needed to succeed in the 21st century, blogging also strengthens students' voices and helps them communicate more effectively.
Bloggers are also a way for students to express themselves. Knowing that there is a real audience (not a teacher) reading their work, they are motivated to write, learn or share student bloggers.
However, for a blog to be an adequate educational activity, educators must see it in a clear educational context with clear objectives and well-defined reasoning as an educational activity.
To get the most out of blogging in your classroom, I've developed a five-step framework here to help you write a blog from start to writing.
1- Explain clear pedagogical goals
As a teacher, you need to clearly understand the educational goals of using blogging with your students. To do this, you need to ask questions and think about different options. Sample questions:
- What learning goals do I want my students to achieve through the blog?
- What literacy skills will students develop through the blog?
- Should I allow students to create blog content or limit their blog posts to comments on teacher posts?
- What content can my students share?
- Will the school blog be available to all students? Will it include all voices that speak to different needs and learning styles?
- What about student privacy? Will I make my class blog visible to everyone or will I limit my readers to certain people?
- Who cares when there are technical problems along the way?
- How much time is spent on educational blogs?
2- Define the rules and regulations of the blog
After answering these questions, the next step is to create rules: rules for regulating student blogs. This is best done through a collaborative approach in which each student participates.
No matter how you do it, make sure it's a team effort. Students become more engaged when they know their voice is involved in the decision making process during the lesson. A participatory approach will help students develop a sense of responsibility for their own learning.
3- Explain the concepts of digital citizenship: copyright
Once you have established the rules for running a student blog, I believe you must meet the requirements to take advantage of student technology assets. One of these requirements is that students understand their ethical responsibilities as responsible digital citizens.
This can be achieved by teaching the concept of digital citizenship . A variety of educational resources can be used in this regard, including games, lessons and activities. Students must demonstrate a functional understanding of digital citizenship before engaging in digital activities.
You should also be aware of the difficulties of copyright and fair use. Understand the concept of shared creative patents . Assign different digital assignments to make sure they apply what they have learned. Don't forget to share with them this list of resources where you can search for copyrighted images to use in their blog projects.
4- Create blog sections
Once students are aware of the ethical, technical, and pedagogical requirements for an educational blog, the next step is to complete a list of evaluation criteria for evaluating a student blog.
Sections help students understand their blogging expectations in the classroom and guide their blogging practice. Select the items you want to rate. Share the list with students so they know what to expect.
For example, some areas to focus on include content, writing mechanism, style, student voice, research skills, quotation, punctuality, proofreading, and so on. Check out this list of blog posts to help you get started. .
5- Choose a blogging platform
The final step in this blogging structure is choosing the right blogging platform to create a classy blog. As this is an educational blogging experience students participate in, you need to be careful in your choice.
In particular, any blogging platform you are considering should offer at least the following:
- Be friendly to teachers և Help students և Provide a safe environment for sharing information և Share resources. If a platform collects personal information from users, be sure to read their privacy policy to find out why and why they collect this type of information.
- Simplicity և easy to use. A blogging platform with a difficult technical learning curve or a platform that requires programming and HTM skills is definitely not the best option for you and your students.
- It supports the creation and sharing of content such as videos, images, spreadsheets, posters, graphics, charts, presentations and more.
- It offers several privacy settings. For example, you might want a blog that offers the ability to limit readers to certain people. B. those who connect or invite readers. So, if you decide to limit your blog's audience to students and their parents only, you can.
- It offers the possibility to add a specific domain name. When you first create your class blog, it must be in a subdomain, such as your blog.edublogs.com. A blogging platform that allows you to add custom domains allows you to add your own domain name (eg www.yourblog.com) by redirecting the old URL to the newly created URL. This is usually done for a small annual fee.
I have already reviewed the 5 best platforms for teachers and educators to create their own blogs and websites. Check the list to see what options I have included.
Additional sources:
Free blogging courses for educators (Edublogs)
Edublogs Blog Resources Teacher Guides (Edulogs)
Comments
Post a Comment