Teachers and Weblogs
From High School Online Collaborative Writing
Contents |
[edit] Teachers Learning How to Blog
In the NYCWP, we've learned to tell our own stories as a way to inform our thinking, especially when we are going through changes. Here are the beginnings of some stories that show what happens when writing teachers learn how to blog and how to teach with blogs.
[edit] Four Main Structures
When deciding if, how and why (not necesssarily in that order) to blog with students, teachers might consider four main structures:
- Teacher posts... Blogs where a teacher posts announcements, links, and news items and no one, I mean no one, replies.
- Teacher posts... students respond Blogs where teachers post as per #1 above, but students repond in the comments section after postings. Discussion occurs, but it seems to be the type of discussion that appears when a teacher provides a verbal prompt.
- Teacher and students post and all respond... Blogs where students post and teachers post and everyone responds to anyone anytime.
- Students maintain own pages... Blogs where a class home page is a clearinghouse with links to "Member blogs" (like we have on our Member Blogs link), and students maintain their own pages. Students and teacher read and respond to all, as we will now, but from the writer's blog. The downside here is the maintenance of all the sites.
[edit] Why this interests writing teachers
We are interested in the purpose, function and use of each type of blog. Many of us are particularly interested in #3 and #4 and the relative merits of each, since these two are the ones that are most commonly used, probably because they are the most practical for most teachers.
[edit] External Links
See the Links List: Going Public in our weblog.
