If my students were able to access my blog, blogs are currently blocked at my school we are being told to use the district’s Moodle system instead of blogs and wikis, during the school day then there would be a much greater opportunity to utilize the blog as an organic extension of the course through discussions that could continue on the blog. However, since access would be limited for the students, I would implement the use of the blog as an avenue of publication for my students. Since I teach seniors in a course entitled Sports Literature I am constantly preaching to them the idea of a completed paper being one that is ready to be published. A blog would offer me an avenue to share the work of my students with a wider audience than just myself, and the idea would reinforce the concept of publishable work.
Moreover, I would attempt to offer my information for my students because the construction of a blog offers the opportunity to interact with material presented in the classroom, but at the same time to interact with new material presented on the blog. In order to have students feel most comfortable interacting with one another on the blog, I would design a question of the week where students would be given until Sunday to respond to the question and to their peers. Questions could vary from “Who had a greater impact on the acceptance of black athletes into professional sports Joe Louis or Jack Johnson?” or “In your opinion, throughout the history of sports, who or what was the greatest sports changing moment and why?”
Furthermore, I envision the blog as a way of posting more references for my students to use in order to understand the content. Even if they are not interested with the week’s topic in the course posting references can familiarize them with different sports writers, acclimate them with different writing styles, and allow them to understand the impact each writer has had on the perception of sports and athletes in our country. And as the writers change from era to era, my students will be able to witness first hand how journalistic writing changed after the television was invented.
Very well thought out use of your blog.
ReplyDeleteWhy does your school not like the use of blogs and wikis? Do they not see the educational value?
Will you incorporate all of those avenues of use at once or will you implement one strategy at a time?
Your question of the week was my favorite use.
I can't really state why my district does not allow the students to work on blogs and wikis. I do know that they will allow a blog if only the students and the teacher have access to the blog. The district will not allow the blog to be shared with the public. We do have a Moodle, but besides discussions I do not feel that a Moodle offers the same type of opportunities that a blog does, let alone the possibilities that are present when implementing a wiki into the classroom. For the past three years I used Twitter to teach vocabulary. I wold present students with 15-20 ACT prep vocabulary words and we set-up a twitter account for the class and we would hold live tweets on the Smart Board with students using either their smart phones or the computer lab to post their tweets using the vocabulary words for the week. It was incredible to view each tweet live up on the board, but this year the use of Twitter is no longer allowed.
ReplyDeleteOnline learning environments can provide the students with a rich and engaging extension of our classrooms; it is unfortunate that your district limits their use. On one hand I can understand that there maybe some of their fears associated with an online, public forum for students to interact. However, just like any interaction, or technology we use with our students we need to teach “the rules”. More times then not, I am sure (or hope) that the use of blogs or wikis would provide the students with a positive experience that they would be motivated and excited to participate in. But just like in our own non-virtual classrooms, rules are broken from time to time and as the teachers we handle and diffuse the situation. Maybe your research during this class will help arm you with enough positive information that you could present it to your administrators and maybe utilize such technology in the future! Best of luck as your suggestions on incorporating a blog into your Sports Literature course seems exciting.
ReplyDeleteLarzyB,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that rules can and will be broken in both our classroom and on our blog, but the blog offers the opportunity to allow students the chance to police the material found on the class blog. I never thought about collecting data to present to my district. I think that I will focus my data collection on the classroom wiki. The concept of a wiki suits my Sports Literature class a little better than a blog, but I will also collect data on our Youtube class channel because we are creating our own sports, filming students participating in these created sports, and uploading each video onto Youtube.