Using Blogs in the Classroom

I really like Mr.Harbeck’s blog. I think this is a very effective means of communication for his students. Encouraging his students to critique and provide positive constructive feedback to their peers is excellent and demonstrates the techniques described in the Don’t Feed the Trolls Article. I think it is very fitting to use a medium such as blogging to help students develop appropriate written communication skills. Mr. H is obviously quite skilled at arranging the information, as his site looks very appealing. I also enjoyed playing the second grade Chinese problem solving game that required me to move the frogs from one side of the pond to the other.

I think with some practice I could effectively use a blog with my Kindergarten class. It took me a little while to get my favorite animal post to look the way I wanted it to. I managed to navigate away from the page inadvertently three or four times and had to start over each time. It was a little frustrating that my page did not appear like the preview when it posted to the actual page. I spent too much time trying to get the page to look the way I wanted with the appropriate spacing and such viewing it using the preview prompt since it did not appear as the preview showed on the real site. It makes me wonder why it has the preview when it is not accurate. Once I posted and saw that it did not match the preview I wanted to change the line spacing so the words would break across the page in a more pleasing fashion but I could not figure out how to make these changes. I was able to get back into the edit section but the changes I made did not make the text adjust.

In regard to application in my current Kindergarten classroom I could use a blog in a number of ways. I could provide regular updates to communicate to families what we are doing in class. I could provide links to interactive sites or activities to enrich what my students are learning in the classroom. I could facilitate interaction and communication between the families in my classroom to encourage development of a community. If there is a means to provide a secure, pass protected area I could post pictures of my students to illustrate what we are doing in class and make them available for parents to download and printout.