BWP Chapters 2-3 — Blogs
I blogged for the first time last week, but I’ve spent enough time on these things to get a feel for what they do. Even before Tuesday, I had the fundamentals: you can publish your posts; throw up videos, images, music; you can link to other sites; others can post their comments to what you put up — I knew all that. What I hadn’t realized was how many ways this medium could be used in the classroom. Most enlightening in these chapters was the section in which Richardson runs through some of the ways teachers already use blogs: as class portals, online portfolios, school Web sites, etc. The part about Richardson’s students exchanging ideas with writer Sue Monk-Kidd got me fired up about the possibility of some day doing something similar with my students. More broadly, I’m drawn to how blogs fit into a broad approach to education that is constructivist, collaborative, and that breaks down barriers between students and opportunities to learn beyond the classroom walls. When I was in high school, collaboration as I recall meant having other students critique your writing, or having a class discussion about something we read. As Richardson points out, blogging eliminates physical limitations to how students interact with each other, their teachers, and with sources as far away as the other side of the world. Very cool.
Blog's are very nice.
June 15, 2009 at 12:33 am
Given your professional background–and the rise of “citizen journalism” and the blogosphere–you will likely have a sharper sense of what is possible in getting students to interact directly with the world of media through blogs, wikis, and so on. The new web invites this manner of contribution and participation.
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