You can say that today every classroom should have its own a classroom blog. You, as a student can use it to explore different sides of assignments, to have some help with them, and, also, it can help you to become a really good digital citizen.
To start with something, you can choose the blog platform. These are the best ones: WordPress, Blogger, Edublogs. It is good that most of the platforms are free. Here you have five tips to learn how to work with this tool. It will make your homework and in-class assignments easier and more educational.
1. Teach another student something new
You should encourage other people to study and show their knowledge. It can be done by teaching one student by another with few ways.
- Your class can be split into two different groups having two different reading tasks.
- Students should be split into two groups with different reading tasks too.
- Every student should write a blog post telling about their reading task or exploring some topic suggested by you.
This is a chance for students to explore their homework from different sides and perspectives.
2. A monthly book club for your classroom
If you launch some book club, it will encourage students to read more. It works like that. Every month some students will choose a book he likes. To be more concrete, you can make a list to pick up books from. Then your students log their reading using Whooo’s Reading. They can do it manually or online. And then one student should write a report in a blog post form.
And then it is time for students to discuss the book using comments under the blog post. They can tell about their impression and ideas.
It works like a simple studying process. Every student can show their knowledge of the book and also learn about being a good digital citizen. Starr Sackstein, New York Director for the Journalism Education Association, says that the blog is one of the best ways to help students to navigate the digital landscape. There will be a great interest for blog writing because of seeing how others are using them.
3. Current events coverage
Blogs can help students to cover the informational text Common Core standard and to have a really fun task to do. Using blog you can make students summarize their knowledge they’ve got from the article. Also, you can teach them some other important lessons:
- They can learn how to deal with Google search navigation searching for the article online
- They should add the URL to the post to learn copy and paste action
- The formatting will be learned by adding some photos to the main points
- While rewriting their article headlines to use as the blog headline, they will become more creative
4. Using a blog for homework assignments
Forget about paperwork at home. Your students can use your blog to do their homework. You can check out homework tasks wherever you are. You just need to have an Internet connection. You also can create more interesting homework assignments. You should consider some formatting requirements while creating assignments:
- Consider the main points
- You can show a picture of the main character
- You can share the most interesting and helpful links
5. A weekly reflection
There should be a weekly reflection assignment for you and your students to check in. Each student should create a blog post about things he or she learned during that week. They can write this post in every format they want. It can be a summary, main points or even a poem.
So, doing blog assignments students will be more excited. These are the main ideas you can start with. And, of course, you should explore new ways to use blogs for studying and benefiting students and yourself.
