A couple of years ago the school district where I teach at required that the teachers and our counselor sign up for a blog and get it up and running by the beginning of school last year. I designed my blog as a tool for my students and their parents to use to catch up on missing assignments, print off assignments they may have left at school, use the blogroll to access math related websites (since I teach math), and announce upcoming events in my classes. My blog fits the description of the “teacher communication” blog that the writer of the http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging webpage wrote about. My blog is basically a one-way communication blog. (I do, though, have the comments open on most of the pages so that students and parents can ask questions and make comments.) This was a good way for me to get a blog started and begin feeling my way through things such as making a post and publishing it, uploading documents so that people who visit my blog may look at and print them, and make different pages on the blog so that there is some logical separation of topics on the blog.
As I am beginning the 23 Things I am seeing that I need to step out and make my blog an active part in my classes and not just a place to store resources for my students. I will be looking for ways others have made their blogs active with their students. I want to keep the resources available for the students’ use as well as stretch my comfort zone and allow the students to make comments, write posts, respond to comments, respond to questions in my posts, allow students to react to prompts, etc. (As I am writing this I am scaring myself and also thinking of many of the ways I can do this effectively.)
I like what the writer of the Educational Blogging page had to say about what blogging does for students. He said that blogging helps our students find a voice, creates enthusiasm for writing and communication, engages students in conversation and learning, provides an opportunity to teach about responsible journalism, and empowers students. I want my students to have a good understanding of math and how it can be a useful tool in their lives. They might even appreciate math as they write about it and have others comment on what was written. I want my students to think, analyze, use logic, and common sense when looking at a problem that deals with math. Blogging about math may be a start to this process.
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