Being in ED 422 and using classroom blogging, I am able to see how the "five don'ts of classroom blogging" that are mentioned in this article are important for academic blogging. If students who created blogs for a particular class were not given certain guidelines to follow, guaranteed things would not be as organized and problems would most likely arise. The article mentions how without given instruction on how to use classroom blogging appropriately, students would be more likely to use foul wordage and bully their peers, and while this may not be the case for students in a college course, grade school students would probably use classroom blogging inappropriately if there were no given guidelines. One thing that I am guilty of doing, that this article specifically says not to do, is confuse blogging with social networking, because I have always known blogs to be associated with things like MySpace and Facebook in one way or another. The last "don't" which states that blogging should not be left to the students was the one that I found to be the most important, because I honestly think that having the teacher/ professor post weekly blogs motivates students to post their own blog and be creative with it, just as Professor Heil has done for our class!!
Questions:
1. Would you use classroom blogging with your students?
Yes, because I feel that classroom blogging would allow students to be more motivated in their work and perhaps more creative since more than just the teacher would be seeing their work. I think it is important for students to put effort in their work, rather than finishing an assignment just to finish, and I think classroom blogging will push students to do so. I also feel that classroom blogging would be more fun, because students can get creative with it and go beyond the bare minimum of various assignments.
2. How would classroom blogging enhance student learning?
Classroom blogging could contribute to student learning in a variety of ways. Just like electronic discussion boards, students can share their ideas with their peers through their blogs. They can also help one another by providing comments on each other's blogs, giving students the opportunity to improve their work based on students' comments. And just as the article mentions, it can assist in student writing, as blogs can slowly but surely develop into paragraphs, which can then perhaps develop into an essay.
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