TEACHING STRATEGIES AND METHOS IN TEACHING MAPEH

BAGO CITY COLLEGE

JOY G. CAMPOS, LPT, MEd

7 Benefits to Blogging in the Classroom

“To blog is to share, to connect, to create, to inspire.”

Blogging with your students in the classroom can be a fun and positive way to connect
and share with parents on a regular basis. There are also many educational benefits
that your students can gain from blogging.

1.Parent Communication
Parents want to be continuously informed about what their child is learning about, what
they did at school that day and how they are going in class. Especially in the early
years. They also love to see photos of their child in their learning environment.

It’s great to get into the habit of taking a few photos or a short video each day. It doesn’t
take long and helps maintain open communication between home and school. At the
end of the day or at the end of the week, post the photos and videos on a classroom
blog with a summary of the learning that took place. It might be a fun English or Maths
task or a whole class activity. Encourage parents to comment on the post and provide
opportunities for students to reply.

2. Internet Safety
Through the use of a classroom blog, teaching opportunities for informing students
about cyber safety will naturally occur.
Instead of a stand alone lesson, the teaching of cyber safety should be an ongoing
conversation with your students. When these opportunities take place, discuss with your
students the importance of being safe online and how to be a responsible member of an
online community. Discuss with your students how to keep themselves safe online and
what to do if they are presented with an unsafe situation.

3. Improved Literacy Skills

By setting up a classroom blog and expecting students to participate, blogging can
increase literacy skills and engagement. Blogging provides students with a purpose to
write, which in turn encourages them to produce higher quality work.

Blogs are also a perfect tool for teaching spelling, grammar and language conventions.
By editing a blog together with your class, students are able to understand the
importance of self-correcting before publishing to an online community.

4. Improved ICT Skills

Through the use of blogging in the classroom, students are able to develop their ICT
skills, becoming more ICT literate and prepared for the 21st century.

Your students’ knowledge of ICT skills, such as keyboard shortcuts, researching online
and publishing, will improve giving them greater confidence when using technology in
and outside the classroom.

5. Authentic Audience
By engaging your students with classroom blogging, you are giving your students an
authentic audience to communicate with, instead of it always being you or their
classmates reading their work.

A blog provides students the opportunity to reach a wider audience, such as their
parents, other students or teachers in the school, or people from an outside community.
Students are able to receive immediate feedback, increasing their level of engagement
and self-improvement.

6. Sense of Community
A sense of community can be created in the classroom by working together to write a
blog.
Blogging as a whole class requires great teamwork and collaboration. Students need to
work together as a team and agree on the content in order to create an engaging and
interesting blog post that represents their class. When a class has a sense of
community, students feel like they have a purpose in the classroom environment,
increasing their level of engagement.

7. Global Connection
One of the most exciting benefits blogging provides children is the opportunity to
connect with other students, classrooms and schools across the globe.

Your class can connect with another class anywhere in the world as a blogging ‘buddy
‘or to ask questions when researching about different topics. This gives students a
better understanding and tolerance of the world they live in and provides them with a
global connection.

.TAKE A LOOK!

1) Owning Your Content

There are many places online where you can publish your thoughts and artefacts
including a whole heap of social media platforms. The fact is though, this can be
building on borrowed land.

Social media algorithms change (e.g. Facebook), platforms close (e.g. Wikispaces),
pricing structures change, and accounts are suspended. There can be a lot of
uncertainty. The safest option is to have a blog to house all your work and then use
other platforms in ancillary ways.

Tip: Choose an export-friendly blogging platform like Edublogs, WordPress, or Blogger

to ensure your data is portable.

2) Your Online Hub

A blog can be a place where all the bits and pieces you create and explore in the online
and offline world can be housed. This could include videos, podcasts, graphic designs,
articles, links etc. Blogs can keep your virtual world well organised (and they’re
searchable!).

You can keep your blog going year after year. In that way, it’s a great way to keep track
of your thoughts, your creations, and your learning.
A blog can also be used as evidence of student learning over time, whether or not you
set out to capture this. It’s like a digital filing cabinet!

3) Traditional Literacy

Many years ago, I wrote about how my students had improved their reading and writing
skills greatly through blogging. It’s important to note that an improvement in literacy
skills doesn’t come automatically with a blogging program. I’ve found that it requires a
variation of the following formula.

I also found that through integrating blogging into the literacy curriculum, not only did
students’ literacy skills improve, but engagement levels increased. Reluctant writers
wanted to write for a purpose and students were using blogs to purposefully
communicate and converse with others.

I’ve heard these sentiments being echoed by many other teachers worldwide.

4) New Literacies

All teachers know that the meaning of being literate has changed. There are so many
new literacies and skills that are essential to master to successfully navigate 21st
century life.
These new literacies include things like digital citizenship, curation, critical evaluation,
visual literacies and so on. And then there are essential skills like problem solving,
critical thinking, and cultural awareness.

Reading and writing online is different. It’s not linear. It’s hyperlinked and requires you to
put the pieces of the puzzle together and connect the dots.

How do we cover all these new literacies? There are only so many hours in the day.

You know what the answer is!

A high quality blogging program can offer the perfect avenue for developing
traditional and new literacy skills in an authentic and ongoing way.

5) All Subject Areas

While blogging as an ideal avenue for teaching and learning literacy, blogs can also be
used in any subject area: maths, history, physical education, art…the list goes on!

Maths can be incorporated into blogging in so many different ways. For example, I used
to use Clustrmaps on a daily basis for authentic place value discussions. I also created
the Our World, Our Numbers global blogging project to explore maths concepts with
other blogging classes around the world.

In any subject, you can showcase learning, post reflections, post question prompts, and
embed all sorts of tools.

6) Creativity

Blogging allows you to be creative! This is one of the things I have always loved about
the blogging process.

Of course, there is the element of creative writing and the opportunity to explore
different topics. But there’s also the aspect of problem solving and coming up with
different solutions (a skill a blogger always needs).

Additionally, blogging lets you express yourself visually through custom themes,
headers, photography, layouts, and designs. There’s an art to that…and it’s fun!

If you remember that a blog is just a blank canvas, you can innovate and mould it into
anything you like!
7) Home-School Connections

Effective two-way communication between home and school is so important.

Many parents and families enjoying using a class (or student) blog as a virtual “window
into the classroom”.

Through commenting, families can be a part of what is happening in the classroom and
have real time access to their child’s education. I also love the way that information
published on a class blog can be used as conversation starters at home.

Educating families and encouraging parent participation in your blog is something I

have written about on The Edublogger.

8) Digital Citizenship

Everyone would agree that teaching students to be safe online is an important issue.
However, one-off lessons on digital citizenship are just not going to have a long-lasting
effect.

Blogging is an excellent method for learning to be a responsible member of an online

community in an authentic and ongoing way.

I believe the best approach is to neither block young people from being online, or allow
them unsupervised access. The sweet spot is in the middle where we work with our
students to mentor them and build their skills and understandings. Blogging provides
the perfect avenue to keep the lines of conversation around this topic open.

9) Digital Footprints

One specific area of digital citizenship that deserves a special mention is digital
footprints. Put simply, digital footprints are the traces of what an individual does online.

There is a lot of negativity associated with this term. The message I like to promote is
that we should protect our digital footprints and try to ensure that they are positive.
Encouraging students to avoid posting or doing anything online just seems
counterproductive.

A blog can be used to shape the digital footprint of a teacher or students in a carefully
curated and positive way. Of course, you need permission for students to post publicly.
10) Social Skills and Confidence

While some people may be quick to say blogging and social media can inhibit social
skills, I see blogging as a terrific starting point.

Blogging can allow certain individuals to practise their skills with communication,
conversation, empathy and so on. These can then be transferred to the “offline world”.
Many years ago I shared a parent’s perspective in a post about how students on the
autism spectrum made progress in different ways through blogging.

In the year 2019, it’s essential that individuals can communicate well both
online and offline.

I’ve also always loved using blogging to explicitly teach students how to be polite and
considerate of others. This can be done in simple ways like ensuring you reply to people
when they comment on your blog, asking questions to show interest in others, and
asking permission before posting about someone else.

11) ICT Skills and Digital Literacy

Blogging assists students (and teachers) to become digitally literate.

Through blogging, many skills are able to be discussed and practised, often incidentally.
These can range from keyboard shortcuts, coding, Creative Commons, research skills,
using multimedia, troubleshooting and a lot more.

Some of these skills are more specific to blogging (e.g. using plugins, tags/categories
etc.), while others are more general ICT skills (e.g. using images, managing passwords
etc).

This learning is all for an authentic purpose rather than through skill and drill exercises.

12) Developing Thinking

Many bloggers talk about the phenomenon where the process of writing down your
thoughts helps to straighten out your thinking, develop your thinking, and basically help
you work out what you think.

Personally, I find this to be very true. I often have vague thoughts which develop and
come to life as I tap away at the keyboard.
13) Reflections

Constantly consuming information isn’t an ideal way to learn and grow. We need space
to be able to process information and reflect. Blogging can be a great way to
incorporate regular reflection into the classroom program.

Some teachers like to allow this to happen naturally, while others scaffold the reflective
process with prompts. Perhaps striving to make your prompts redundant at some stage
is a good aim!

14) Classroom Community

Creating a blog requires teamwork and collaboration. Students and teachers learn and
share together.

A real sense of classroom community can be developed through blogging and

establishing a class identity.

One element I’ve always particularly enjoyed was seeing students ask each other “how
did you do that?” This leads to organic peer tutoring which is a joy to see play out.

The teacher does not have to be the expert, and the experience does not have to be
“easy”.

A class blog mascot can be a fun way to represent your classroom community too.

15) Authenticity

In the traditional classroom, the only audience for student work was the teacher and
sometimes classmates and parents.

Blogs provide a much larger audience for student work. They also offer an avenue for
feedback and self-improvement through commenting.

I’ve found students really take pride in the work that goes on the blog and want to do
their best for their impending audience. Motivation seems to increase when students are
writing for a purpose.

As Dan Pink says, students need autonomy, mastery, and purpose to feel motivated.
16) Having a Voice

When publishing online, as opposed to writing in the analogue way, students have the
chance to have their voices heard. What a wasted opportunity to not tap into that!

Students can write about their passions, concerns, their learning, and more. They can
start to feel empowered about making a difference in the world and they can help others
understand them.

Of course, this links back to the area of confidence as well. There’s an element of “risk”
to put your thoughts out there but with support, this can really be a benefit for students.

All of the above applies to teachers who blog too!

17) Global Connections

I have found this to be one of the most exciting benefits of blogging. Blogging can help
flatten the classroom walls and offer priceless experiences for students and teachers.

A sense of understanding and tolerance can develop and students can learn a lot about
the world in which they live.

If you’re interested in global collaboration, I’ve compiled a list of tips which might help
you get started.

18) Purposeful, Productive, and Fun!

We know students (and teachers) can spend a lot of time playing around with things
online. Whether it’s looking at social media, watching videos, gaming, or going on a trail
of link clicking, there can be a lot of wasted time.

We all need downtime occasionally, but why not tap into this interest by doing
something purposeful and productive online? Blogging allows you to socialise, consume
content, create content and have fun while learning and making a difference.