Blogging in the English Classroom

This past school year, I taught 9^th grade world literature classes for both College Prep A and College Prep B level students. Typically, I teach freshman students. Because my high school includes 9^th-12^th grade level students, I consider it my responsibility to help ease the transition of my students into the larger, often more stressful high school environment and prepare them for the next few years of required English courses. I have found Weblogs to be a great technological tool for my classroom, although I would like to incorporate more use of them in the future.

One advantage I have discovered in using a class blog is that of a homework reminder for my students. For the past few years, I have kept a weekly blog to write down the homework assignment for each night. Although the weekly homework is written on the board in front of the room and we review the homework together each day, of course there are students who forget to write it down in their school-provided planners or forget these agenda books in their lockers at the end of the school day. Therefore, all students need to do is access my blog to help them remember what is required. It is also very beneficial for parents who wish to know whether their children have work to complete at home. As the parents of freshman students, it is often difficult for them to know when it is time to allow their kids to be fully responsible for work that is either completed or unfinished. Some 9^th grade students do not need any assistance from parents while others still require a great amount of guidance and homework supervision.

In addition to homework, I post a very brief overview of the lesson or activities to be completed each day. Therefore, when students are absent, they may visit the blog to review what was missed. If they have the necessary materials at home with them, they will know what needs to be done so that they do not fall behind in class. Again, parents may also find this beneficial when they are checking due dates and assessing student progress toward the completion of a paper or project. I agree with the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms when he writes that “having a place to publish the course curriculum, syllabus, class rules, homework assignments, rubrics, handouts, and presentations makes a Weblog a powerful course management tool” (Richardson, 2010, p. 21). While I plan to continue managing a class blog in the future, I would like to expand my use of Weblogs by requiring my students to create their own Weblogs for different purposes.

Two years ago, I assigned my students to create their own blogs as another means of classroom participation. In addition to sharing their thoughts and questions about the texts we were reading during class discussions, students also posted comments and responses to prompts I gave them through the class blog. This opened the doors for a different kind of interaction between classmates. Instead of just handing in an assignment for the teacher to read, students were able to read and comment on each other’s work. This idea appealed to me because as a major advocate of classroom participation, I am always looking for more opportunities for student involvement. I know that some students are not willing to participate due to shyness and introverted personalities, so I thought that participating on a blog would help alleviate some fears and anxiety. Similarly, Richardson (2010) believes that a blog “supports different learning styles” and that students “take ownership of the space” which “can lead to a greater sense of participation” (p. 27). However, I did not assign my students enough prompts to make the blogs truly worthwhile. In the future, I would work harder to give the blog a more significant role in the curriculum.

Another aspect of blogs that intrigues me is the opportunity it affords for working with a larger community. Students take more pride in their work when it is viewed by a larger audience. Therefore, I would like to enable my students to share their work with an extended community by posting it on their blogs. For example, during the Shakespeare unit, students write their own sonnets or create a comic strip to summarize Act 3. If they knew that they would posting their work to the blog upon completion, students might put more effort into their work since many more people would have the chance to view and comment on their projects. Moreover, my students can actually work with students from a different environment altogether. In Web Literacy for Educators, Alan November (2008) suggests that teachers use blogs to “create a forum for collaboration with other students” through the use of “online projects with students around the world” (p. 84). This exciting endeavor would certainly enrich my students’ learning experience and open their eyes to a world of possibilities that would be nonexistent without the Internet.

Overall, I believe that the use of Weblogs enhances the experiences of students in the classroom in addition to the quality of work produced. I am eager to discover new uses of Weblogs and to incorporate them into a language arts classroom in various ways.

References

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.