Image used with permission from creative commons.
Blogs The New Compostion Notebook
Blogs can be used to supplement a wide variety of curriculums. Not only do they engage leaners but they are fairly easy to use as well. Glenco/McGraw-Hill (2006) stated that the use of blogs in classrooms could serve four basic functions. Those functions were classroom management, collaboration, discussions, and student portfolios.
Think about the first three functions for a moment. They really spoke to me. Classroom management, collaboration and discussions are vital to any learning environment, regardless of the content or classroom. I challenge anyone to come up with a learning environment where they are not. These functions are just as relevant to grade school students as they are to students who participate in post secondary and corporate learning programs. Granted, one could argue that a blog may not always be the best implementation of those functions. The same is true for any educational medium. Success lies in finding the best delivery medium that will reach the targeted learner.
Although I work in the realm of corporate training, I couldn’t help to but to reflect back my on learning experiences in grade school. Many of you, like me can more than likely remember keeping a journal in those green composition notebooks. I’m twenty-six, and those notebooks were used years before my time and they are still used in classrooms today. Shouldn’t things have changed by now? Considering how much technology has advanced. Perhaps some schools would rather avoid the risk associated with blogs. After all, blogs can be public and students must have a clear acceptable use policy to adhere to (Glenco/McGraw-Hill, 2006). This is still unacceptable to me. Imagine the collaboration and discussion that could take place in the classroom if students were able to blog their journal entries. The benefits far outweigh those stated risks. Not to mention there are blogging solutions like WordPress out there that could be hosted inside an organization’s firewalls (Daly, 2006). That would solve the exposure to the public.
Before closing, I want to leave you with one more thought. When was the last time you composed a document for work or school with a pen and paper? The reality is that technology is here stay. As educators our obligation is to prepare students for what lies ahead. It’s time to embrace and incorporate technologies that are used in our daily lives into our curriculums.
References
Daly, P.G. (2006). Building an internal blog with WordPress. Retrieved April 2, 2010, http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200603/ij_03_10_06a.html
Glenco/McGraw-Hill. (2006). Using blogs to integrate technology in the classroom. Retrieved April 1, 2010, from http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/4
