I was new to blogging this year. I did not know what purpose it really served and I found it at first to be more of an annoyance to be honest. However, I am also in a teaching with technology course and have had a lesson and unit on blogging. I feel much more comfortable with it and understand how it is useful. I think that because I feel comfortable and familiar with blogging it allows me to try new things and take more risks with it. For example, my blog for my other class has video on it, pictures, and various links that are embedded. These kinds of features make me really excited!
In addition, we discussed in that class how blogging can and is helpful in classrooms, even with very young children. One really important way you can use blogs in your classroom is to keep in contact with parents. At the elementary level, it is really important to keep in constant contact with parents. I think this is a wonderful way to do that. Blogs are easy to add to and check and therefore could be a great resource for your families to use. It would also hopefully free up some email space of mine because general answers could be posted on the blog. I also think it is a great learning tool for students of all ages becuase it does generate conversations outside the classroom. Learning can be taken home just as it was for me about the Habibi debate. I wanted the conversation to continue and it was able to through my blog. I was able to see other people's sides of the issue as well through reading their blogs. It is a great student to student way of communication as well.
So although I was skeptical about blogging at first, I am able to see its benefits. I like that in this class we can blog on anything that stricks us, although sometimes you give us a particular topic. It allows for some structure but also much freedom which helps me keep interested and keeps the blogs for our classmates varied. I think it is a good resource to be introduced to through this class, especially this class is so heavily discussion based. The discussions seem to continue outside of class if students want them to and in certain cases I think there is always someone who wants to discuss more.
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I agree with Gina in the idea that it is neat and worthwhile that we are able to go home after class and blog about anything else that we have thought about or want to say. I think this is important for both the student and the teacher. I think it is a good way to understand whether or not students were interested in the discussion but also gives teachers an idea if maybe a student didn't comment directly in class but blogged about it that maybe more time was needed to think about the discussion or maybe that student just felt more comfortable voicing their opinion through his or her blog. I think blogging could also be an effective way for students to disagree with other students, this may be positive or negative but it may be less intimidating to be opposed to someone's viewpoint online then in class when you are face to face. I think blogging is very interesting and I hope that students are using it to their best advantage. I also think that (if the students understand this whole blogging thing better than I do) it is interesting for teachers to go on their student's blogs and really get a better sense of who they are as individuals because you can do so many things with blogs.
You make great points Gina - hopefully you can give us some mini-lessons on blogs, since I am still learning myself about all the features and uses.
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