I’ll be delivering an ISTE Webinar later this afternoon, and it occured to me last night that I might try to suggest some instructional uses of blogs aligned with the new ISTE NETS Refresh. I’m including them here as a reference for the Webinar participants and for you.
- Creativity & Innovation
- Communication & Collaboration
- Research & Information Fluency
- Critical Thinking, Problem-solving, & Decision-Making
- Digital Citizenship
- Technology Operation & Concepts
Assignment:
In the coming weeks, major news outlets will start talking about the leading events of 2007 and the most influencial (or best dressed) people, i.e. Time’s “‘Man’ of the Year.” Few of your students will remember when these same agencies were talking about the events and people of the century and even of the millennium.
As a creative blogging assignment, we might ask students to look through the lists of the people and events of the year and of the century (People of the Year & Man of the Century) and then speculate on an achievement that might define the 21st century, describe it, and describe a ficticious person who is most responsible for the achievement.
After the original blog posts have been made, then classmates and others could comment on the articles, describing how the achievement of the century might impact on them.
Assignment:
As you are studying a part of the world in Social Studies class, ask students to write blog entries about what they are learning and also their reflections about the places and people they are learning about.
Connect with another class in that part of the world (Use ePals’ Class Finder), and arrange for students in that class to read your students’ blogs and then comment on them with clarifications.
Assignment:
As students are engaged in a major research assignment, as them to journal daily about their experience, listing what information they have found, how they found it, and how they evaluated the information to assure its appropriateness to the assignment.
Read and comment on the blog entries, giving support, tips, corrections, and other aide.
Assignment:
After reading a story, novel, or play, ask students to pretend to be one of the characters, and describe one sentence that might have been spoken to another character and at what time, that might have overcome the roadblocks of the problem more quickly and with less cost.
Ask classmates to read the blog entries and comment what the second character would logically have said in return.
Assignment:
Through class discussions, establish a bloggers code of digital citizenship and then ask students to select one of the elements of the code and write a blog entry about why it is important, describing the harm that ignoring it can harm, and strategies for making it a practice of habit.
Have classmates read and comment on, expressing support and making recommendations about strategies.
Assignment:
Ask students to learn about a new web tool and prepare to demonstrate it to the class. Ask them to journal, in their blog, their process for learning the tool, how the went about finding the answers to questions about operation or reasoning their ways into the solutions.
Then ask classmates to read the blog entries and comment, identifying the skills that seemed to be the most useful to the blogger.
There is obviously a lot of overlap, as many of these blogging activities address a number of the ISTE standards. Bottome line is that blogging is about communication, conversation, language, sharing, and building.
I’m disappointed that the NETs Standards may be satisfied so easily with such inauthentic and teacher-centric assignments.
The nature of the lesson plans you provided do very little to impact teaching practices or justify an investment in educational technology. They hardly illuminate the potential of blogging.
Learners benefit from having an audience for their work and via collaboration or peer review, but only if the product is worthy of an audience. Coercing classmates into reading and commenting on similar work they likely don’t care about is inauthentic. The technology affords us so much more.
Your blog provides convincing evidence to support my arguments (published here and here) I stand by my analysis published in 1993 that the ISTE NETs “are unimaginative, unenforceable and unnecessary.”
Gary,
As usual, what you say is true from your broader perspective. But blogs can be more than one, two, or three things. They can be larger global and authentic life observations. They can also be smaller writing assignments.
You’re absolutely on when you say that audience is the key. Otherwise, it’s just writing.
I may not have made it clear in this post, but a few posts ago, I described this webinar as very basic, the goal being to attract teachers who are considering the application, from the perspective of their daily classroom objectives.
No comment on the ISTE NETS.
Got to get ready to teach into my computer 😉
Gary– Can you cite an example or two of a non teacher-centered assignment where blogs or other digital publishing tool could be used in class to support an investment of educational technology while still meeting state standards for instruction?
Barry
I would guess having students coming up with topics to blog about and discuss would be non teacher-centered. I do throw out stuff for the kids to write about but they seem to ignore me.
🙁 They come up with their own topics and seem to like to discuss with each other rather than me. Latest topics for discussion introduced by kids– Should kids get allowances? Should kids have homework? Golden Compass OKed by Catholic Church. Fantasy Football. Is 4th grade too young for cellphones? Looking around starting with Recent Posts from the left menu–http://areallydifferentplace.org
True! I think that this is a fantastic way to use blogging. My list was far more contrived to fit into the curriculum needs of teachers.
Again, blogs are a platform for communications. The style and purpose of the communication can vary widely, and it should.
I like the way that you’ve arranged your blog. I think it’s the way it should work, but you do work with a special group of students — I’m assuming from the information available on the Nieman Enhanced Learning Center.
Thanks for the ideas. I am currently compiling every idea I find on how to use blogging in the classroom. Hope you don’t mind, I added you ideas to the list. I would love to have any other ideas you or members of the blogging community have. I am using a wiki for this compilation. The address is: http://future-of-education.wikispaces.com/
Dave, I do teach gifted kids K-6–some are gifted writers; some not, but one thing they do have is opinions!! Mattea started a blog discussion today called “Being Funny”. We ended up chatting about Steven Wright and Monty Python. When I first started I did some hand wringing—“what will they ever write about”…but no worry…they had ideas. Many times my blog posts are ignored!!