Why Blogs?

As I become a teacher, I have not given blogs much thought. I think there are powerful tools and reasons to use a blog inside the classroom, and yes, even in elementary. As I reflect on the uses of blogs and how I have benefited from using them in the classroom I can see trends and a multitude of reasons for not keeping blogs on the back burner.

For starters, I think a classroom blog can help students develop a sense of classroom community. This is a safe place where settings can be changed to be viewed by classroom and parents only. This allows for students to develop, create, and share their work with their peers in a safe manner. Another reason for using blogs is to create a discussion. Blogs have many features where you can comment on posts, links, etc. This gives way to an open discussion where students might feel more comfortable sharing their opinions and using different links, videos, pictures within their comments to expand their thinking.

I love the idea of students being able to make a portfolio within the blog to display their work. This acts as a showcase not only for the students, but the teacher and parents. This could be beneficial for certain situations, such as parent-teacher conferences. I am not sold with this being the only form of displaying work, as I think it is important to display hard copies throughout the room, but this is just an added benefit— you can take pictures and upload them to the portfolio!
One of the last reasons I think a blog could be beneficial is for group projects. This ties in a little with discussion, but it is an open forum for students to collaborate together, in real time. I think this is a wonderful resource we are so lucky to have. There is no time constraints, it allows documentation of their report, their progress, their conversations with one another.

Touching on our discussion during our first class, I loved the many reasons to use technology for the differentiated instruction. For elementary students, you cannot expect each student to read or write. Blogs would allow students to speak to produce their writing. For ELL's you can post videos or attach a translator for different languages. There are so many ways that blogs could be beneficial inside any classroom.

The only downfall I see with using an online resource (blog) is the access students have to computers or the internet. As I want to teach within the Public School system, not every student has access to computers at home, let alone enough for each student in the classroom. This could cause some issues when speaking about the above reasons. I think if the resources are accessible and reasonable there should be no reason to not have a classroom blog!