Grades: 9,10,11,12
Subject: Physical Science
The activity that I'm am proposing to my students is using blogs and RSS feeds to develop discussions about subjects in Science. I used to do this activity with students where they would find articles and television shows that interested them in some aspect of science. They would then develop a short presentation to introduce their interest to the class. The downside was sacrificing large amounts of classroom time to have these discussions and presentations. With the ability to blog and follow each others' postings, I can have this serve as a activity outside the classroom where students can debate and discuss their findings without using in-class time. It can be used as a scaffolding activity that was illustrated in Richardson's text about blogging (Richardson, 2010). I can then monitor student progress, give suggestions, and promote discussion by posting to individual blogs. This can be a year long project similar to our posting activity on the Walden website.
References:
Richardson, W.
(2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and
other powerful web tools for classrooms. (3rd ed.). Corwin
Press.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful way to use this blog. Students can post their presentations as a blog post and then get feedback from others. Would you require each student to develop their own blog? If so, edublogs.com allows you to set up student blogs under a teacher's account. This way you can manage and monitor student progress in one area.
Hope this helps as you move forward.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful idea to help further your students ideas and make the most of the time in the classroom. How would you handle students that do not have access to the internet at home? Do you go through the process of how to post items to the blog or do you leave it to the students to explore the blog? How do you hold your students accountable to do their own work, rather than have a parent or another adult do the work for them?
Best of luck in this new adventure!!
Kendra
Hello Jason,
ReplyDeleteYou are right when you say that it is time consuming to do presentation in the classroom. Having students present their project and then discuss what they thought of the presentation can take a lot of time in the classroom. We only have 50-55 minutes for one period and this is not a lot of time to hear everyone. So when you say you want to have student’s blog their presentation I think it is a great idea. Everyone in the classroom will have the chance to discuss and contribute what they think about the presentation. You can also monitor your student’s progress. How would you incorporate your blog to have students do lab experiments?
Jason, I think your idea is really innovative and interesting. I especially like how it will save time and resources that you may be able to utilize differently. I'm wondering though how you would assess the reliability of the student's sources? After having taught them the necessary research skills, setting standards for reliability of sources may help.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck
Amanda