Currently as an opportunity for extra credit I have my students turn in a science related article from a newspaper or magazine with a summary. It can be done every Friday to help their grade out a little.
I was thinking with this I could post a link to an article or a video and have the students write their response in the comments section. This could be done in place of the science article extra credit.
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I teach 7th grade science. I feel that a blog would be a great tool to enrich and supplement the topics I am covering at school. I would feel hesitant to make it a requirement because I teach in a district where many students cannot afford and do not have computers at home. I do believe it can be an effective teaching tool though, because students love using the internet and many would check the blog just for something to do. Hopefully, while they are doing it they will be learning in a manner that is different than what they are presented in class.
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I also teach in a district where many students do not have access to home computers. I do believe that blogs can be a great teaching tool. It is great to help keep student attention on discussions because they know they will have the opportunity to blog about it later. The only problem I see in not making it a requirement is that you tend to only get self-motivated students involved in voluntary activities. There has to be a way to fairly get everybody involved in blogging in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteBHarr, that is a great idea to post links to articles or videos and have students comment on them. Will you utilize this idea in your blog? If your students do participate in blogs, will you create a rubric to assess their entries?
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Lee that if you don't require students to participate then you will spending a lot of energy motivating students to learn who are already motivated. I have learned this from my own experience with a discussion board. I thought that the idea of discussing topics on the computer with me and classmates would magically motivate all my students to get on line and learn. By not requiring it, I discuss topics with my self-motivated students, but that is all.
ReplyDeleteI think you could get around the obstacle of lack of computer access by incorporating computer time during class. Do you have a computer lab at your school that you could take your whole class to? Do you have a portable lap top cart with a wireless router that you could bring into your classroom? Could you set a rotating schedule for access to the computers in your classroom? These are all the possible solutions I have come up with because I am looking at the same challenge. Just as Dr. Thornburg suggests in our DVD, teachers are going to have to be creative in order to benefit from the new technology that is available for us to educate in the "communication age" (Laureate, 2008). I don't think we can get away with computer access as an excuse to not take advantage of these new teaching tools. I bet your students and mine could all find a way to access the internet, in any economic situation, if it involved communicating socially with one of their friends. Maybe if we require and push them into using technology for more educational tasks, they will begin to see the benefits beyond gaming and socializing.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2008).The Third Wave. Baltimore, MD: Laureate Ed., Inc.
Hey Benjamin, I fortunately do not work in a school where my students don't have reliable access to a personal computer at home. Do you think that it might be possible that these students visit the computer lab during their free time at school, or perhaps you might take some class time yourself and take the whole lot of students some days to the computer lab? That way they could still accomplish your goals of utilizing the classroom blog site.
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