Blogs are a very useful way for students to illustrate
learning, much as I am doing in this course. I intend to use blogs in both of
my teaching areas at school; legal studies and English.
I have learnt this week that blogs can be used for both
individual work and collaborative work. As individuals, students can use blogs
for creative writing, assignment construction and general class work. As a
class, students can build ‘expert jigsaw’ blogs which requires students to
contribute information on different topics, building the blog up so that it
covers a whole topic. If students use blogs individually it is important that
their work is scaffolded and closely monitored to ensure they are utilising the
technology properly.
Below is a SWOT analysis on Blogs for my teaching areas.
Strengths
·
Blogging utilises the learning theory connectivism.
As mentioned in one of my previous blogs on the Six Thinking Hats Wiki,
connectivism
was founded by George Siemens and theorises that learning occurs through the
networking world of the Internet and technology (Siemens, 2004). Therefore
students are able to learn through blogging because it is connected to the
Internet, which contains an endless amount of resources for them to learn from.
·
Blogging also utilises the learning theory
social constructivism, a theory which is attributed to Lev Vygotsky. This
learning theory says that learning occurs through social interactions (Bose,
2010). Students obviously engage in this style of learning when they blog
because they are able to comment on each other’s blogs and also build on each
other’s work when working on a collaborative blog.
·
Blogs are engaging for students because they
utilise technology which they use in everyday life.
·
Blogs are a good way for teachers to assess
student progress.
Weaknesses
· Students may not utilise the technology properly
if they are not closely monitored. My own personal experience is that I have
seen students write unrelated comments on their learning blogs and wiki sites.
Opportunities
· The great thing about using blogs is that it
uses the Internet which has an endless amount of resources. This means blogs
can virtually be as flexible as a student and a teacher want.
Threats
·
Students can be subject to unwanted invasions of
privacy and internet security breaches.
·
Students may be exposed to offensive material.
·
Student bullying may be an issue on blogs if
they are not closely monitored.
·
Students also have to be cautious of copyright
laws.
·
It should be noted that the above can largely be
avoided if teachers and schools implement risk management.
How would I use
blogs in my teaching areas?
As I mentioned above, my teaching areas are English and legal studies. Blogging would compliment both of these courses well. For example my English students could use blogs for creative writing, writing an entry each lesson. My legal studies students could also use blogs in a number of ways. One way might be using a jigsaw puzzle in which students research in groups a number of different government policies and then write a blog entry about one of the policies. Each group could write about a different policy and, once completed, the blog would have everything the students would need to know about government policies.
Having completed an analysis on blogs I can see there
are so many opportunities for implementing them into my classroom.
References
Bose,
S. (2010, February). Learning Collaboratively with Web 2.0 Technologies:
Putting into Action Social Constructivism. Paper presented at the National
Distance Education Programme-Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (DEP-SSA) Seminar on
Technology Enhanced Collaboration for Improving Quality of Education at
Elementary Level, New Delhi, India.
Siemens,
G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.
Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
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