Use of Blogs in teaching

The tremendous ease of use of a blog has made it a web tool of great potential in education.

why teachers and educators should consider blogging as an educational medium

• Students enjoy blogging
• Blogging enhances literacy skills
• Using a blog makes learning independent of time  and place
• It gets students engaged and boost their motivation
• It promotes their communication skills
• Just like other asynchronous media, blogs give time to students to reflect
• It makes teaching students oriented
• It emphasizes the " test and learn" and " learning by doing" strategies instead of " plan and execute " ones
• It fosters the learning bonds between teachers and students
• It gives a chance to shy students to participate with their peers and get their voice heard
• It keeps parents updated about their kids progress
• It enhances home-school links
• It gives students a genuine and potentially worldwide audience for their work.
• Blogging gives students ownership over their own learning and an authentic voice allowing them to articulate their needs and inform their learning.
• It contributes to identity-formation in students
• Blogging  helps teachers develop professionally
• It fosters the development of writing and research skills as well as digital skills.

Here are some ways on how teachers can use blogs in their classrooms:

• Provide further assignments for students to work on
• Have students work in small groups to write and post summaries of content covered in class to build a compendium for content covered over a semester
• Get students to do their writing assignments in the form of blog posts
• Encourage students to post comments on each others postings
• Use blogs for peer learning. Get students to read their colleagues writings and underline spelling and grammatical mistakes
• Use blogs for classroom projects where students can include videos, clips, audio,, text and images
• Teachers can create a specific section just for website links and references to other interesting content online.
• Use activities, games, puzzles to enrich students learning experiences
• Use blogs to conduct an online survey in relation to your students learning needs. You can also include parents in the surveys. Check out these free survey tools for teachers.
• Post  your classroom guidelines and code of conduct on your classroom blog for students to review
• Publish a list of the objectives ( general as well as specific goals )
• Challenge your students to write, record and post tutorials about certain concepts of things you teach them
• Use a section in your blog for classroom news where to communicate the general classroom news. Work with students to identify the kinds of information they would like to share with their parents, then engage them in writing and posting daily or weekly news updates
• Post weekly challenges such as a riddle or brainteaser that requires your students to think creatively and critically.  Ask students to post their answers on the blog then discuss the solutions with the whole class at the end of the week. This will tremendously improve their problem-solving skills
• Again use your blog as a communicative tool both with your students and their parents.