and the purpose it would serve could end up broad and diverse. It would definitely be a place where students interact about the content and showcase their work. I would invite students as they graduate to check back in and interact with current students, giving them support and suggestions along with relating stories and experiences. This would tie our local community together while still being open to the global community as well.
A blog would be an especially good instructional tool in the classroom because it promotes literacy, learner based communities, and technology in the classroom, while providing interactive engagement, distance learning for those who need it, not to mention covering multi-learning types.
Teaching government, economics, and history, there are a plethora of ways using a blog could facilitate learning. Reaching out to other students around the world to compare and contrast historical and political events, economic systems, and personal and cultural experiences would enrich the lives of all and broaden perspectives beyond the individual.
I also teach social studies to high school students. I think a good activity for the use of the blog in your government course would be to start a debate. The students could post their thoughts and reactions to each other. I have a few students who do not like to speak in front of the class. This would help those students as well as others who are not social beings. I come from a low SES school where many of the students do not have access to internet from home. So my question to you is this: Would have the students use the blog in the classroom or from home?
ReplyDeleteIt also would be a good idea to have them create usernames in order to keep anonymity in their answers to help shy students as well.
ReplyDeleteI like amandas comment about anonymous usernames. My school is also los SES and some have internet on phones but not all have computer access at home.
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of having former students connect with current students! What a great way to continue the learning process for the former students while enriching the learning of your current students. The only question I have about that is the participation level. I would hope you would have a good number of students to do this.
ReplyDeleteI like Amanda's first comment about using blogs as a source of debate. I teach Social Studies myself and find that students seem to forget their are supposed to debate a particular topic rather than just yell at each other. This would be a great way for students to interact with one another without the threat of arguments within the classroom. I agree with everyone else in that they should have assigned usernames to help those shy or unsure students in your class.
Hi Hope,
ReplyDeleteSocial studies is an ideal content area for blogging. You could (if you liked) share political cartoons--links to speeches--all kinds of resources as a link and have students share their thoughts. A great way to build community but also to develop perspective taking in the context of language arts and social studies. A rubric can help students with understanding the expectations.
Thank you for sharing.