Sam’s blog

Edublogs has recently trialed using blogs with students. As part of these trials James asked teachers to respond with their comments of the blogs available to students.

Many teachers have responded, many sharing success stories and some sharing ideas on how they feel it could be improved. Some teachers shared mistakes that they made, and how they resovled them, others shared suggestions on how they planned to use blogs with their students and how they had used the blogs with their students.

The understanding I got from the comments was that teachers were quite happy with the blogs and that students were quite enthusiastic using the programs.

One teacher shared her blog and it was really interesting to see how she was using edublogs with her class. They were in middle school, going on to high school, so a bit older than what we would be using in our primary teaching, however they could be used in a similar way with year 5 or 6 students. She explained the simple way in which she introduced blogs to her students, and the results that she got from the students suggest both the students level of enjoyment in the task and the effectiveness of the teachers simple instructions.

The task she gave her students was as follows and the results were made available via this link.

1. Pick your theme (must have at least one sidebar).
2. Change the title and add a quote for your Tagline.
3. Arrange your sidebars and widgets (I required some, others they could decide on).
4. Erase the default links in the blogroll and add links to our class blog and class wiki.
5. Create and upload your avatar.
6. Erase the default post.

Overall, I found it really interesting to read the comments and see how teachers are able to actually use blogs with their students.

It showed me that the use of blogs does not need to be very complicated and that it is quite simple to use, and as my observations on prac have shown me, children are much more capable using technology than many teachers can be.

I did however consider that some teachers would not dare to try this form of technology as they would not feel confident in using this kind of technology in their teaching, however it is quite simple to use and beneficial for students, it also allows for students to learn through a medium that is interesting and relevent to them and the technologically advanced world that we live in. I think that the students who are in classes with teachers who are afraid to use this technology are at a disadvantage as they miss out on using a valuable communication and learning tool