February 2008 — Web 2.0
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Five Don'ts of Classroom Blogging
Avoiding these pitfalls will help students get the full benefits of online journaling.
NO ONE NEEDS TO SELL BROCK DUBBELS on the use of blogging as a part of curriculum. Dubbels, an engineering teacher at Washburn High School in Minneapolis has seen firsthand that his students perform better when they know their peers will be reviewing their work as opposed to merely having to face the judgment of their teacher.
Brock Dubbels
But ironically, in Dubbels' experience, the voice that blogging gives to students is what presents the most potential trouble. Kids will always push the line on what they say to each other, and what they link to, and educators can find themselves on the defensive.
"I call it technicaleducaphobia," says Dubbels, a former English teacher and a doctoral candidate in reading and comprehension at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches a course called Video Games as Learning Tools. "Teachers have often been placed in situations where they don't have access to equipment that will monitor these things, or they don't consider the larger picture and oftentimes get into trouble. These become cautionary tales, and other teachers decide, ‘Well, I'm not going to do that.' But the potential trouble is worth the rewards. You just have to plan around the potential problems." Start by sidestepping these common pitfalls.
Anne Davis
1. DON'T just dive in. "If you put kids on blogs without setting up your guidelines and objectives, I can guarantee you will have a lot of problems," warns Anne Davis, an information systems training specialist at Georgia State University. As a component of the instructional technology outreach she provides to K-12 teachers and schools, she teaches blogging at K-12 schools throughout Georgia. She keeps her own "Edublog", as she named it, where she discusses the use of blogs in education and provides her own blogging projects.
Davis advises teachers to have their students sign off on a code of conduct for blogging that covers areas such as bullying, slander, and foul language. In Davis' classrooms, students who violate the rules lose their internet privileges. She also says it's a good idea for a teacher to send a note to parents describing the specific blogging project and to get an adult signature granting permission. She suggests teachers search for interesting educational blogs, and then e-mail the educators behind them for advice.
