Benefits for creating a classroom environment for student blogging begin with establishing a foundation for their success. Why is this important? Integrating blogs transforms a classroom into a learning community where students become self-directed learners and thinkers. This in turn, causes students to use higher order thinking skills as they create and post entries in their blogs, along with commenting on other student’s blogs. Student Centered Learning: Transforming Learning So what are the benefits for your students when establishing a classroom environment for blogging? First, they become more motivated to learn when they are no longer dependent learners. This is when students depend on you for telling, showing, and providing the processes for what and how they learn. Blogging fosters curiosity in students beyond technology gadgetry, they are learning with technology. This is the first step in creating a setting in which students begin the process of real learning. What is real learning? This is when students are more engaged in learning activities in which they take ownership. By taking ownership, students have a greater chance of making connections between concepts and ideas. This is where blogging helps students, they move beyond learning isolated facts – they make connections. Online Learning: Flattening the Classroom The benefits for online learning through student blogs include students no longer learn in isolation. They use sources of information beyond the classroom walls to sustain their blogs. Here are benefits of online learning with blogs. Social Collaboration – students benefit from their blogs through collaboration with students in other classrooms around the world. How does this happen? Student blogs flatten classrooms through the power of the internet, by integrating online tools for collaboration and communication in their blogs. Students can create posts for their blog that integrate podcasts, screencasts, videos, and surveys or polls. Tools which support their work include Google Docs, YouTube, Audacity, Facebook, VoiceThread, Podomatic, Glogster, Flickr, and Twitter. Continual Learning – many students may only be able to make blog comments or entries to their blogs in class or in a school computer lab. However, they still have opportunities to prepare their blog posts seven days a week. How can they do this? Everything students use to gather information is not necessarily on the internet. They can prepare blog posts using resources such as concept appropriate magazines, books, visiting museums and other locations, libraries, and interviewing experts. Of course the internet provides access to all of these same or similar research resources and also resources only available online. Regardless where students access information for their blogs, their blogs provide continual learning benefits such as: self-directed learning peer-to-peer teaching and learning inquiry-based learning problem solving Differentiated Learning with Technology – one size does not fit all, and this applies to the way students learn. Students benefit from blogging because differentiated learning using technology offers the ability to be creative, process new knowledge in their own way, and making sense of what they are learning in a manner more appropriate to their learning style. Collaborative Learning With Technology: A Shared Commitment Through collaborative learning, students gain from sharing with each other. Here are benefits for students when they take responsibility for their own classroom blog. Improved Writing Skills – students learn to focus more on writing and editing blog posts, which in turn improves their writing skills. This comes when they realize their blog entries are no longer just viewed by their teacher. Students learn they are writing for and interacting with wider audiences (teacher, peers, parents, and others) which provide comments, feedback, and recommendations. This collaborative learning loop benefits students’ writing skills through creating clear and concise blog posts. Improved Reading Skills – students find they need to develop an increased understanding of what they read for two reasons. The first, good editing requires good reading skills. The second, preparation of clear and a concise blog post requires reading comprehension. To accomplish these two tasks, students need to approach reading as more than a passive exercise; they need to clearly understand what they are reading to provide well written posts and comments. Improved Research Skills – students benefit from improved research skills by ensuring their information is correct and supported, not just opinion. Information they provide, through posts or comments, requires investigation to substantiate what they are saying. This benefit also improves their critical thinking processes as they learn blogging is more than just a venue for expressing themselves. To integrate student blogging takes planning and vision for what you want students to learn from the experience. Many, probably most, students have had little experience with the dynamics of blogging. However, the benefits for student blogs outweigh any problems which may occur during implementation. A bonus benefit is that allowing students to blog about what they are learning demonstrates their level of understanding of concepts and works well as an alternative assessment. So why not give your students a chance to be more engaged in their learning by allowing them to blog?
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Benefits for creating a classroom environment for student blogging begin with establishing a foundation for their success. Why is this important? Integrating blogs transforms a classroom into a learning community
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