Educational Blogs

The first search engine I used to search for educational blogs was Google. Google’s results were mainly instructions for using blogs in the classroom, personal blogs of teachers, and portal sites that contained directories for the best educational blogs online. Most of the sites were affiliated specifically with educational companies, schools, and teacher discussion groups, which made them seem more credible and directly applicable to the classroom. Then I performed the exact same search on Ask Jeeves. This time, the results were less useful containing some sponsors sites (places you could create blogs), a definition, and random syllabi and forum pages that talked about educational blogs. The third search engine I chose was Dogpile. These results were by far the most diverse and comprehensive. There were discussion sites, lesson plans for using blogs, portal sites, sponsor sites, and a variety of journal/publication articles on the topic. I think there are several reasons for the quality differences in the searches. First, Google was better than Ask Jeeves because it seems to use filters and sorts information in a more relevant way so you get the most useful and trustworthy sites first. Dogpile was the most well-rounded and in depth because it searches with all of the major search engines at once so you get a massive resource bank.

While researching educational blogs, I came across three innovate ways to use them besides the typical journaling and response assignments that are given. The first way is called “round robin blogging” and it is being used for creative writing assignments. As the name implies, this type of blogging gets students to take turns writing part of a story and posting it on the class blog. The entire class participates in writing the story and work-shopping it in an online format. The second creative method is called “pen pal zones” in which students use blogs to communicate with pen pals from another city, state, or even country. Blogs allow letters to be received and sent instantly as opposed to traditional mailing, which gives students a greater opportunity to interact with diverse students. Moreover, since everything is posted online, teachers can track the number of letters to ensure that students are actually writing their pen pals. The third application of blogs is the most exciting; it involves using blogs to communicate with experts. For instance, some teachers are having students ask questions on their class blog and then inviting expert scientists from around the world to answer them. I could use this format in an English classroom to connect students with authors, publishers, war experts, Holocaust survivors, and a variety of other experts who have knowledge about topics we are discussing. Since I am not an expert in any of these areas, it would be wonderful to use blogs to connect students with a direct source of information.

Keeping these opportunities in mind, it is easy to get carried away with excitement and forget about the issues of classroom dynamics. It is crucial to consider the way blogging may impact the classroom in both positive and negative ways. From my limited research, I think blogging is going to figuratively remove the walls of classrooms and allow students to learn in a global environment. Moreover, blogging opens up more opportunities for students to share their personal thoughts and feelings which will help create a strong classroom community. However, there are also ways that blogging would change classroom dynamics that are not so good. For instance, blogging demands interaction between students, but in a delayed, impersonal sense. As a result, students may not engage in face-to-face discussion and develop critical social skills that rise out of dialog. Another change that could be taken positively or negatively depending on the situation, blogging also takes away a lot of responsibility off of the teacher and gives power to the students.

Overall, I see many pros to using blogs in the classroom. The major one is that students will be more excited to participate and learn because the assignments use technology and computers—hobbies that nearly every teen enjoys. Motivation and participation will most likely increase, and that is always a good thing. A second benefit I see to using blogs is the instant access they provide students to one another, to outside experts, to global classrooms, and to the teacher. The opportunity for instant feedback, collaboration, and problem solving will allow more learning to take place outside of the limited class period. There are, however, several negative aspects to blogging as well. For one thing, you cannot expect that every student will have access to a computer and therefore some may have difficulty participating and completing assignments. A second problem I foresee is that students will not think as critically or write as polished as they would if they were turning in a formal paper. For some reason people equate computer writing with a more casual and lax style and the quality of writing suffers. Since my ultimate goal is to help students write better, this weakness is a big drawback.