Blogging as a way to reach the Millenials ~by Lindsay Kuciemba

The time has come in which students and teachers need to learn to more effectively implement technology usage within the classroom. For far too many years, laptops have been sitting in safe places, locked up and waiting to share their many capabilities with the lives of the current generation of students we teach. These students, referred to as the Millenials, are a generation of savvy and knowledgeable computer users. To many of these students, coming to school each day means learning the way their parents learned 30 years ago. The same style of teaching is simply not acceptable, especially when one thinks about the drastic amount of change our world has seen in the last 5 years.

One way to easily implement technology usage within the classroom is by having students engage with each other through use of a classroom blog. We already know that students enjoy sharing their thoughts with others through such mediums as text messages and emails. Why not have them share their thoughts and opinions about educational issues by participating in a blog with their classmates and teacher? Many teachers use one central blog for all students to respond to. Teachers can post a thought-provoking question or topic that has been covered in class, and students will respond. The benefits to this are many, but include allowing all students to share on a more level playing field, as well as allowing students to look at the thoughts and comments of their classmates. In the high school setting, many teachers set up a common class blog and allow students the opportunity to determine how they'd best like to use the blog. Students often work together to create their own study guide for an upcoming test. This can be done by having each student leave 1-2 bulleted items that share important concepts learned during the unit of study. All students can benefit from looking at the notes of their peers. This same concept can also be applied on a daily basis, by including things such as a question/answer section on the classroom blog. Students are encouraged to work alongside their classmates, helping all to better understand the information covered in class. And, all of this assistance takes place not in real time, but online. These are just some ways to help our students feel more connected with the technological world that they are immersed in.

Technology is a tool that will help to unlock many doors that are currently closed to our students. By acknowledging and accepting the way our students interact with their peers, we can more effectively "reach" them. One way to do this is by implementing the use of educational blogging. The uses for blogging in the classroom are limitless. Discover for yourself some of the ways that you can set up and use an educational blog. Like many other teachers that are currently using blogs, I'm sure you will find your students to be highly involved in a rich discussion and dialog that reaches far beyond the four rigid and confining walls of the classroom.

Research Specific Objectives

Students will learn to locate and determine main ideas and supporting details in a selection.

Students will learn to include related text based details in their written reading comprehension question responses.

Students will learn to underline key terms and parts of a question, to help them better understand what they need respond to.

Goal Statement

The goal of this project is to improve overall student reading comprehension.

Problem Statement- ProCert

Students in Miss Kuciemba's fourth grade class are having difficulty in the area of reading comprehension, as evidenced by low scores on reading tests and lack of accurate and supported answers during class discussions. This group of students will improve their reading comprehension by rereading the selection as a whole or in parts, and supporting their work by including selection details.

How do you see Web2 changing/impacting education?

Web2 is a much more interactive online experience than the traditional web. The traditional web gives you information and lets you use that in whatever way you choose. However, there is no real way to interact with and edit/modify that information. Web2 gives users the opportunity to add their own knowledge and experiences, and make this information public to other users. In the educational setting, Web2 can be used to help students take control of their learning experiences and add to it anything they would like. For example, my students just began responding on our classroom blog. I have made this web address public to the families of my students, in hopes that they can share what their children have read, and even reply to comments their child has posted. It is also my hope that soon I can have a section of the class blog devoted to parents, in which they can respond to discussion questions that will help inform and aid my teaching. And for those parents that live or travel outside of the US, they can still monitor their student's learning. For one of my students, seeing her mom (currently in China) comment on what she has posted as a learning experience will make it clear that her mom continues to be actively involved in her learning and well-being. I would like to use Web2 to help my students interact with students in other parts of the state or world. Being that my students live in a very wealthy area, I would enjoy seeing them interact and share learning experiences with those whom live in a more poverty-stricken area. For example, I could work to create a wiki in which we interact with students of a school in Louisiana, whom we helped out, post-Katrina. It would be a valuable experience for us all to see how income, location, and other experiences can affect learning. I would also enjoy seeing my students gain more culture and understanding, through the process of interacting with similar age students around the world.

Use of blogging in the classroom

I just read a fantastic article about the use of blogging in the classroom. The article was titled "In the Classroom Web Logs Are the New Bulletin Boards," and was featured in the New York Times on August 19, 2004. This was a more dated article than I would have liked to read, however, I felt the information to be very helpful in further swaying me to use educational blogging in my classroom. Let me share with you a bit about the article.

A second grade teacher from MD wrote about how she uses educational blogging to help facilitate discussion with her students. An example of this is how she had her students sign on to their classroom web log, following a field trip, instead of holding a class discussion. Students wrote about their learning experiences on the trip. They were also given the opportunity to more quickly respond and interact with their peers, than a journal writing experience would provide. This teacher commented that her quiet students in class were usually the ones who truly came alive while working online.

Other teachers featured in the article remarked that because of web blogs, class discussions do not need to end when the bell rings. Follow-up questions can be posed by teachers, and students are able to get feedback more quickly and frequently from their teachers, as well as their peers. The article also mentions that thought grammar will not always be perfect on a web blog, students seem to take more care in what they are writing, knowing that their families and others are able to read what they post. Some teachers worry, however, that by allowing their students to write on the web, they encourage bad habits such as e-mail abbreviations.

A goal of web blogging in the classrooms is to get students to write more often. Blogging is a different form of writing, which may or may not prove to be successful in your own classroom. The fact of the matter is that web blogging is becoming more and more popular among teachers. Most teachers find it easy to set up a classroom blog, and see the reward as being that kids are excited about learning. What are your thoughts on the information I just shared with you?

What is your favorite part about fall?

I am interested in everyone's favorite part about fall? I know it is tough for me to just think of 1 reason why I love fall, so include up to 3 reasons why this is a season you enjoy.

First day of class

So, I am back in my 2nd year of masters degree work at City U. I'm sitting next to my two great friends, Kindra and Mike. It is fun for all of us to be back together, sitting in a row and counting the minutes till we may get ourselves acquainted with the Pumphouse again. I am ready for this year, and to increase my knowledge with the many technological features I am currently not using. I'm quickly realizing how much is out there, which will help to make my life easier and more organized. I think I may also blow my students away with some of the things I'll be able to teach and show them. I could only imagine that by allowing my 4th graders to add to a blog at home, however, their parents would become a bit upset. Knowing my students, the girls would probably bully each other on the blog. So, my new job would be checking security of the blog, and ensuring that my students are correctly using the chat feature of the blog.