The Benefits of Blogging

I started blogging with my third graders this fall, and our first purpose was to communicate with a classroom in Philadelphia about our Global Read Aloud book. 

I find that blogging can offer opportunities for students to develop their communications skills through meaningful writing experiences.  Our blog has been a great tool to motivate students to write, and to write well.

Our blog, Google Apps for Education and class twitter account have also helped to address the Common Core State Standards for writing.  Specifically standard six, which calls upon students to use technology to "produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others." Homerun!

So how can you get started with student blogging?  These steps helped my students have successful writing experiences:

Establish a purpose.

Decide what you want students to write about.  Ask yourself:

Will you ask students to write reflective math or science journals, book reviews, or opinion pieces on current events?

How can the blog support learning objectives in the discipline(s) you teach?

We have blogged about reading, writing, science, social studies and Genius Hour.  Posts have ranged from book reviews to mystery biographies.

Decide on a format and an online platform.

I am using KidBlog for our classblog.  It is a free platform developed specifically for teachers and students.  As the KidBlog administrator, I have many options when it comes to privacy. Students' blogs are completely private, open only to class members, and are password protected.  Because I work with third graders, I chose to restrict our audience to parents and other adults parents choose to share the password with.

I also can enable comments moderation, so any comments on the blog posts are emailed to you before they are published for all to see.

Preparation, procedures and practice.

Structure your blogging and prepare your students to understand the fact that others will read their work.  We want to be thoughtful about what we publish on our blogs.

This generates a great deal of excitement and motivation, but also requires a great deal of responsibility on students' parts. Remind them that blogs offer readers a chance to see their work. Talk explicitly with students about the ramifications of negative blog posts and blog comments.

Also, think about:

How often you would like students to post?

How will they title posts?

Will you be posting a question and/or model response?

Determine Audience.

We have a narrow audience, our families and a classroom in Philadelphia.  For my third graders, this is enough for now.

Is it worth it?

Setting up a blogging project may sound like a hassle—but it's worthwhile.

It is important for students to have their writing read by more people than just their teacher. When they know that their families, their classmates, and people from around the world can read what they write, the impact is measurable. Students pay closer attention to everything from the mechanics of writing to word choice to structure to clarity. They read and re-read their own work before submitting. They asked their friends to read it, too.

My students are engaging in meaningful conversations about writing. They were asking questions and sharing observations more sophisticated than any I'd heard from them before. My students are writers, an ultimate goal for any teacher.

Other reasons to blog:

It provides students with supervised practice using social media. We learn about citizenship and copyright in blogging projects.

Learn about leaving "digital footprint."

Students think critically about the information they want to share.

As you can see, our classroom blog has been keeping me busy weekly and I have not visited my own blog for a few months.  Which leads me to think about my personal and professional blogging goals for next year. 

I hope you think about the benefits of blogging, twitter, and other online learning and writing opportunities.  They are worth the time.