Week 5: Practical Aspects of Using Blogs

Practical Aspects of Using Blogs

In terms of edublogs, I can see the use in a twofold situation for the teacher: Student Blogs and Class Blogs.

In university classes where students have to write, somehow, the use of student blogs sound like the best option. This kind of courses include: writing classes, research projects in elocution courses, or reading skills reports. In these courses students can post their writings, allow partners to comment on their viewpoints (by means of a class wiki with everyone’s blogs’ addresses administered by the teacher) and teacher to contribute to the discussion and to encourage students to edit their posts to achieve syntactical accuracy.

In personal student blogs, each individual, -depending on the course objectives, can write about what the teacher decides. On an elocution class, i.e., students can post their final research drafts to create some kind of forum in their blogs. How about writing classes? Instead of submitting paper-based writing tasks, the teacher can keep a class wiki where s/he can keep track of everyone’s blogs and email addresses to send students’ grading forms with comments and marks. And in a reading class, pupils can create blogs to post their analysis of stories that can also be controlled by means of a class wiki. And in any of these student blogs, they can upload thematic pictures or videos to spice up their projects. Besides, students can also list the “works cited” for visitors to expand their understanding of the subject-matter.

In class blogs, teachers can password-protect their information for their courses. What is meant here is that educators can create their own class blogs that can be “re-used” the following college or school term. It can serve two different purposes: to be used as a guide for the students in terms of projects, papers, or tasks that need to be accomplished or to be used as an online “lesson plan” that can be broken down into weeks or objectives to be covered based on the course syllabus. With this particular blog, students will just be visitors and will not contribute, unless the teacher decides that it is part of what s/he wants students to do. And like in the case of student blogs, educators can embed images and videos and include links to further develop a topic for discussion or research task.

To conclude, no matter what kind of blogs the teacher wants to use in a course, it is important to keep in mind what s/he wants students to do on it. In other words, educators must be certain of the learning objectives and outcomes expected from these online experiences. To make blogs much more appealing to the eye, it is nice to embed widgets that contribute to the blog’s layout. (See lists of widgets sites below.)

Jonathan Acuña

Universidad Latina

Costa Rica

Widgets for Blogs:

This a minute list of possible widgets teachers can use to enhance their blogs, or that can be given to students to embellish their own blogs. Give them a try, and then let me know.