Blogging in the Classroom- Rationale and Step-by-Step
The Rationale:
Students take the research, writing, and publishing process much more seriously when they have an audience other than the teacher. When they publish their works knowing that their own friends and strangers will be reading their words- IT BECOMES AUTHENTIC. When students put intrinsic weight on the end, the process suddenly becomes much more interesting. Teachers find students actually want to revise their 'essays'.
What is it?
Students create a public or private blog on a topic of their choice. They are responsible for creating a blogsite that hosts an introduction page, two resource pages, a posting page, an annotated webliography page, and a PLN (Personal Learning Network) page. While working to fulfill the website requirements, they will be responsible for regularly posting to their blog. In addition to working on their own blogs, students will be responsible for visiting classmates’ sites and commenting on work.
Blogs are perfect for long-term projects such as Genius Hour, 20-Time, PBL, etc. At the end of each research session, students can create a post that summarizes their learning for that session and add next steps to remind them where they need to start off next time.
Who and Where?
This blogging assignment will work in any discipline for any age. My assignment below is designed for 12th grade English. Foreign language, history, science, math- a teacher can create a blog as a formative or summative assessment in his/her subject area.
My daughter and I maintained a blog for her when she was in kindergarten. On our way home from school each day we'd see all kinds of bugs, animals, nature, etc. She'd choose one and we'd do some research. What does research look like in kindergarten? I'd read a paragraph or two from Wikipedia or another source and she choose 5 facts that she thought were the most important to list. This same strategy can be used in elementary school with partner classes. A fifth grade class can be partnered with a kindergarten class and the 5th graders do the reading and help type the information on the blog site. Here is our site- it is old so give us some grace (she has graduated high school now).
I use a public blog for my 12th graders, however there are several educational sites that allow teachers to assign private blog sites to students that have restrictions on who sees the content.
For public blogs, I would suggest Blogger or Weebly. They are free sites with simple drag and type boxes that students can fill in. Blogger has an app that allows a blogger to directly post from his/her phone.
If you are looking for a private blog site for education try edublogs- it is highly recommended by users on Edmodo.
Other Stuff to Think About
There are a few lessons to be taught before students can be let loose on the Internet. This is a subjective list- your circumstances and students may require more or less prior knowledge before embarking on their journeys.
Fair Use/Creative Commons/Copyright- know what these things are and what they can legally post on the Internet.
Internet Etiquette: how to comment, receive comments, broach topics and people
Research Skills: Use RSS feeds to research the topic and an Evernote account to cull and organize the collected information
Legal Issues: Ask your site administrator to be your devil’s advocate. Your admin can think of scenarios that you never would have thought of. Find out what the parameters are for posts students can make and teach those perimeters to the students and the parents.
How to Assess:
Follow the blogs using an RSS Feed. I like Feedly. Assess based on each piece of writing or as the project as a whole.
You can also ask students to submit their new blog article's URL to a Google Form. The results will come back to you in a spreadsheet format that you can easily click the link and assign a grade.
Interested?
Step-By-Step
Before the Unit:
Decide what blogging platform students will use.
Create a "Blogging Usage Agreement" for your students and their parents to sign. You can see a copy of mine here but you will need to approve it with your own organization to use.
Before the Students Are Given Access to Their Blogging Accounts:
Give students some time to think about the topic they'll be blogging about. Allow them to do some internet research on what they might post about and what they might put on their informational/static pages (I require 4 additional pages in addition to the post page).
Introduce students to Feedly, Google News, Apple News or another news catcher where students can get articles about their topic. I then ask my students to pull in at least five varied sources to read and gather research on throughout the year.
Decide on a platform for students to take notes. It could be a simple Google Doc or you might introduce them to an online note keeping guide like Google Keep or Evernote.
Have students research: "How to create a good blog" and discuss their findings.
Share this simple worksheet that will help them plan their blogs and require that students spend some time to plan it out, thoughtfully. Feel free to customize the worksheet to meet your needs.
Have students research: "What makes good blog content" and discuss their findings.
Have a dry-run post/blog day. Ask students to research and handwrite a sample blog post for the week. Are they happy with the content? Do they think the topic they chose will sustain them throughout the grading period? You can use this worksheet for students to take notes and plan each post. Note that the rows will automatically grow as students type.
Help students see how the tools they'll be using contribute to create their end product. I use this to show my students that this is what they'll most likely begin using to do any sort of future research.