Thursday, August 17, 2006

How do I use Blogs in Education? - Part 1

There are innumerable links out there that explains what blogs are and why you should use them in education. What I see less of are specific example of how to use them in education.

Personally, I have only used blogs as a way to communicate with students and parents, but I have not had students blog. The main reason for this was I didn't have a good reason or lesson idea that would be enhanced by blogging.

This is my first posting giving a specific example of how blogs can be used in education. I have at least one more and I'm sure I'll find others as I go along.

I'm contemplating having my physics students blog this year. It will not really be a journal of how their life is going or share lots of personal information (as they always seem to want to do). I'm stealing an idea I found on the web (I can't remember whose blog I found it from). I'm going to have my students be Scribes.

Used and maybe developed by Mr. Kuropatwa, Scribes focuses on having students share class notes through a blog. Each day one student is selected (by the previous Scribe) to take excellent notes and post them to the class blog. The posting must include notes on topics covered, list activities done, give homework, and mention upcoming tests and quizzes. Mr. Kuropatwa describes the process as creating a class specific textbook for the course.

Mr. Kuropatwa creates the class blog and then adds the students as collaborators to the blog. In this way he still maintains control of the blog and can hold students accountable for what they write.

Scribes can be used in any class in any curriculum area. When I implement it I may change the selection mechanism. I will probably select students randomly and only tell them who the day's scribe is at the end of the lesson. I'll post links to my Scribe Blogs once school starts.

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2 comments:

MV said...

Your idea seems to be very good in keeping the students interested in the subject
-VM (entrancephysics.blogspot.com)

Education 2.0 said...

We want to use social media to engage these people in conversation and tell them about our product and our vision. We want to engage these bloggers, teachers, managers on their blogs, on their social media channels and communicate across to them.
We want to utilize web 2.0 technologies to implement a collaboration/communication platform that schools, classrooms, teachers, parents, and students can use. Microblogs, blogs, and wikis are currently the weapons of choice for tech-savvy educators. We need to introduce to them a better way of collaborating and sharing information.
Education social networking is the best for your class. It helps to connect with your teachers and students and communicate with your class.