Kids love to blog with kidblog!

As a reading interventionist, I have found it difficult to incorporate more technology, without veering away from the explicit instruction the students need to meet their learning goals. For me, blogging with students has answered the "how" in overcoming this challenge and has enhanced lessons, improved engagement and eased data tracking and feedback.

I am using kidblog with my students, which I prefer over edublogs, simply due to its simplistic navigation, but I would suggest exploring these or any other forums, to determine which is best for you and your students.

At first I decided to incorporate blogging into a fourth grade vocabulary group. For this group, I am utilizing a vocabulary program that is not engaging for students. Another goal for this group is to improve their written response capabilities. Below you can see some of the fourth graders engaged in a watching a YouTube video related to the content from the current unit in their vocabulary program.

I create posts related to their vocabulary words and units. The posts contain application questions about their words or supplement their understanding of the content with digital media. Students then create posts on their own blogs to respond to my questions, create reflections and provide feedback to one another.

One challenge with introducing blogging, that is a struggle in all of education, has been time. These students are not skilled at typing and therefore creating posts takes them longer than writing answers with pencil and paper. This is difficult when I only meet with students for 30 minutes each day. Aside from this, the overall blogging experience has been positive for me and for my students. I have observed students that do not usually talk much, find their "voice" and students that dislike writing are interested.

After seeing the changes in my fourth grade students, I decided to add blogging to both a second grade and a third grade reading group, as well. Currently, these groups have been synthesizing information from multiple resources and responding through their posts. I hope that I will soon be able to move away from this more "restrictive" blogging, and begin to allow students to post about their own interests and learning adventures. Below, a second grader is combining information from a printed article, online kid-news site and a video about fossils, to explain whether or not he would want to be a paleontologist.

I recommend blogging with your students in anyway you can. Now that my students have had a little practice with blogging, they are logging in from their homes and creating posts about books they are reading on their own time- writing summaries and simple reactions. Who would have thought that students would be completing extra work, on their own time, because they want to!

But don't just take my word for it, check out what these students are saying:

or these, or these, or these...you get the point! Its more than worth it!

Oh the Possibilities

After reading just the first two chapters of Richardson, I feel inspired. I know I can't do it all but I am excited to start. I am looking forward to using the free tools that are available to us, as teachers and as citizens, to create interactive learning opportunities for my students. One of my favorite quotes from the reading is the comparisons between writing and blogging: "Writing stops; blogging continues. Writing is inside; blogging is outside. Writing is monologue; blogging is conversation. Writing is thesis; blogging is synthesis." I liked this so much because it seems that a lot of formative assessment is handing in a culminating paper or responding in a journal that a teacher scores and gets back to you, but a blog provides feedback opportunities from someone other than the teacher and the conversation and learning can continue beyond handing it in; publishing is NOT the end.

One issue that has continually been brought up at school has been how to motivate our students and how to get them to that "next level of achievement." How do we move beyond proficiency and push our students to achieve at the goal and advanced performance levels? I think that blogging could be the answer we have been looking for; blogs are tools that engage readers with ideas, questions and links and they seek response and commentary and advocate collaboration. We want students to take ownership in their work and seek further knowledge. 

To me it seems that blogging opens doors to endless possibilities and provides opportunities for students to submit works and receive feedback from peers and contributors that are not always their teacher (fancy that). I think this work is easier said than done and that a lot of planning and pre-teaching must be happen to have a classroom blog work as an effective learning tool. Even at a whole school level, positive implications can be seen, take the school webpage from Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Portland, OR for example. This page shows a wide range of interaction possibilities. In exploring the page it is obvious the second that it loads that the school's site is more of a news outlet than a site to answer the who, what, where of the school. Just the homepage features 5 posts of school activities in the past week, what an easy way to build a school community and create rapport and bonds between classes, families and community members.  Are blogs the answer to student engagement and family involvement?