Until March 2nd, I honestly had not really thought of using blogs in my class. There can be a couple of reasons for this. One, I have been so focused on teaching standards, and two, every blog website at my school is blocked by "websense". I began to venture toward one of my favorite blogs, and the old blocked message of "social and networking" appears. While the idea of using blogs for student interaction with eighth graders is a pretty interesting thought, I simply can't at this point in time. Now, the question is what can I do to enable this for my students. I have spoken this week with the technology person at my school, and I was not surprised by the response of how we would open the system to myspace and facebook, etc. if we unblocked these sites. So, let's be optimistic and imagine we have the power to blog at school. What could the students gain from blogging about Georgia History? Would I gain a better perspective of the students thoughts? Would they work better together without the teacher looking over their shoulder? Blogging does have a real chance to enhance learing. The students could use it to have many debates over the Civil Rights movement, the reasons for the Civil War, and many other events within the content. I also feel that a class blog would be useful for students to simply exprees their thoughts about the class. What could help them learn and understand the content better? How would they change the way the class was structure? Although there are ways to use blogs for class purposes, the main challenge is breaking down the blog barriers? Any thoughts out their for this seemingly impossible task at the moment?!
Tim
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I understand your frustration about the barriers at school. It sounds like most schools, including the school I teach at, block blog sites. Our school also blocks all e-mail websites and all wiki sites as well. The kids have adapted to it and some have even found ways around the blocks! Luckily for me, almost all of my students have internet access at home so I can feel free to assign any type of internet project and feel confident that none of my students will have trouble getting on the internet somewhere convenient. I have approached the people at our school in charge of the internet to no avail. Our system is run by "older" administrators and they have some misconceptions about what blogs and wikis are about. Maybe, after taking this course, I will be able to convince them to change. I think the best thing you and I can do is to recruit as many teachers as possible who feel that these websites are educationally important and approach them administration. There is strength in numbers!
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