The
idea of having students use blogs in the classrooms is a powerful
one. It empowers students with the ability to publish and share their
opinions and thoughts easily with just the click of a few buttons.
Very different from the situation back then when I was a student
where, in order to publish anything on the Internet, one had to have
good programing knowledge and had to work pages and pages of scripts
just to end with something decent. Not only does it gives student a
way to express easily but also inherently, makes them realize and
'see' that their opinions are as important as that of anybody else
and that, since their opinions will reflect the opinions of many
other people, there will always be an audience for their ideas.
According
to Richardson, in his book Blogs,
Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms,
one of the most important strengths of blogs is the way you are able
to link to other sources of information and in a way connect ideas
together. Links to other internet pages, other blogs, pictures,
videos, just to name a few examples, can easily be integrated within
each post in a blog. Thus, in any project or assignment, students can
easily interconnect their opinions and the information they are being
publishing with that of other students in their classroom, with that
of students in other classrooms, and even with students from other
schools.
This
year, for my 7th
and 8th
grade history and science classes, my students will be creating and
using their own blogs to report each week two current events they
hear in the news or read in the newspaper or Internet, one of them
related to world events and the second to science. They will also be
including, along with a summary of the article, the link to the full
article where they got the information from, their reaction to the
news or events and how they think these affect us and/or impact us
locally. Students will then be commenting on each other posts and
also contributing their reactions to those news posted by others. The
activity will help our students become well informed in current
events and able to express their thoughts and emotions on those
events happening around us. Every end of the month, the students will
create an additional post writing about the two world events and two
science events that impacted them the most and in this post, they
will be (1) briefly summarizing the event, (2) linking to the full
text of the student that originally posted the event, and (3) stating
their own reaction and the reason(s) why the article made an impact
on them.
Marco Cesar Saenz
Using Web Tools in the Classroom
First of all, I like your idea for the usage of the blog, especially since you included the reactions as well as the links. I think it is extremely important for students to learn about current events. I would propose to the students that they use international news websites, not just American ones. That way, they can explore how a story and the point of view changes, when the article was not publish by an American news outlet. For example, the stories covered by Spiegel (even for their English version) are quite different from cnn. Even if they read coverage of the same event by different news outlets, I am sure their reactions to each one would differ. Another good question to ask is, how would someone from a different country react to the same news? Using current events in your teaching opens up new horizons, and using a blog is a great facilitator.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the blog not only help students to learn about technology and current events. Thanks to your idea I have now my blog in which I write my thoughts and ideas about life. Thank you again!
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