BP2_2009111_Educational Uses for Blogs

Blogs can be useful in a variety of educational settings. As an English/Journalism teacher, I use blogs in both my English and Journalism classes. In English, we have an SIR program where students must read a book of their choice everyday for 10 minutes a day. Instead of using class time to make sure they are reading daily, I have my students blog once a week to ensure that they are in fact reading. They must post how many pages they have read and summarize the main events in the book they are reading. When they finish a book, they must do a "Blog Critique" where they give a brief summary of the whole book and then critique the book for their fellow students. Then each student must comment on at least 3 of their fellow students' book critiques a quarter to receive full credit. This enables the students to not only get familiar with creating blogs, but also enables them to use the comment section to find other books they might enjoy. So far it has been a great success.

In Journalism we use blogs as a part of our online Newspaper. Students can create blogs to go along with articles they are covering or add additional topics on the site if something happens at school that we have not covered in that edition of the Newspaper. It is a great way to open up communication to the whole school on our articles and writers. Students who are not in Journalism can then comment on the blogs, which helps us decide what to publish next or what stories to cover. If we get really good or interesting comments we sometimes publish the blogs in the actual Newspaper in the "Letters to the Editor" section. It is a great way to teach students the way that News is being covered online and through the uses of new technologies.

I asked several teachers at our school how they are using Blogs in their classrooms and many of them are not. The ones that are using blogs, are doing so in a variety of ways. The PE teacher is having students blog every night on how they feel after certain workouts and they have to do a two week food diary blog to track their healthy eating habits for the Nutrition class. Science teachers are having students blog on nightly reading and labs, by posting questions they may have while doing their homework. Lastly, I found that the Art classes are using blogs as part of a Research Project where they do critiques on various artists using blogs.

All in all, I think the use of Blogs as an Educational tool is endless and is a truly exciting way to spice up old lesson plans and get the students interested in a whole new way.