In the book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson the second chapter is devoted to the pedagogy of weblogs. For me, this was one of the the most meaningful chapters in the book. Here, Richardson, actually drew from the national standards for English and Language Arts to illustrate the power of a weblog in the classroom. He writes, students emply a wide range of strategies as they writ and use different writing process elemnts appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes, something bloggers do by the verynature of their process, or Students participat as knowledgeable, reflective, creative and critical members of a variety of literacy communities. Blogs create and connect these communities like few other tools.
Students can use weblogs to collaborate, communicate, and illustrate about what they are learning. The weblogs can be their electronic portfolio that they share with a wider audience. They are able to get feedback from others.
During the first course I took on Web 2.0 I almost fell out of my chair when Richardson said that myspace.com is just personal weblogs. You hear such bad, bad press about myspace.com (which I understand lately that the owners are making a much better effort to monitor) but when you think of the sheer numbers of kids that blog daily to have them implement the same practice into the classroom would be motivating to students. Even by telling the kids that they are blogging on myspace and we are going to do the same thing here only it is going to be about our unit on Natural Resources and the Environment We Live In. I’d say that would catch their attention.
It is the weblog that really opened the Read/Write Web and started the trend toward the development of all these powerful tools. You now have a weblog so you add pictures from flickr, link to your favorite websites, add/download a little music, let people know where you live (maybe not such a good idea) and a add a feed to a podcast you like to follow. Use these tools in the classroom not only are you with it but have your students attention.
I certainly agree with the statement that in using these tools, you have your students’ attention. Whenever something is projected from the computer, students perk up. If I tell the students that I found something “cool” on Teacher Tube, they are very attentive to it. It also helps to validate what we teach because the students can see that it is an important concept to other people as well.
Comment by Jayne Boyle — April 17, 2008 @ 1:43 am