BP2_2010011_Educational Uses for Blogs

Image used courtesy of Photoxpress

Blogs have great potential for use in my classroom. I began my research into blogs by searching the internet to see examples of their current uses. I came across a slideshow on slideshare that gave some great ideas for blog uses in the classroom.

One such use is to post a non-supported fact to the blog and have students find and add the supporting information. I could use that but of course with a little modification for teaching history. Next semester my students will be studying World War II. I could post Axis Powers and Allied Powers as topics, and the students would then add the details to each post. I would expect them to post the name of those countries, their leaders, when they entered the war and any other relevant information. The more I explored, the more my brain worked to think of ways to use blogs.

The next idea allows the student to be creative yet still show a mastery of the vocabulary. Students could write a story that uses the vocabulary in context. Another topic that my students will be learning is about Westward Movement at the turn of the Century. The vocabulary of that section consists of words that describe the technologies that made life bearable and made settlement of the Great Plains easier. So ideally students would be writing a story about a family or maybe an individual that settled in the region during that time.

Writing seems a little less daunting for the students when it is done on the computer. "It really isn't work", I overheard one of my students say.

References

Dell, D. (n.d.). Educational uses of blogs and tags. Retrieved from

http://www.slideshare.net/sqoolmaster/educational-uses-of-blogs-and-tags-234136