Thursday, September 12, 2013

4 Reasons Students Should Blog in the Classroom

Many teachers are using blogging in the classroom as a tool for developing real-world writing experiences. Blogging allows students to develop digital citizenship skills and literacy skills across curricular content areas while writing for a real audience.

The advantages of blogging is exemplified in the story of Martha Payne.  Payne created a personal blog called "Never Seconds: One primary school pupil's daily dose of school dinners," which documented her perception of student lunches in her own school.  Payne's motivation for starting her blog derived from that real-world connection:  "I wanted to be a journalist, and I asked my dad if I could write everyday.  Dad suggested a blog, and we looked at some.  I like the fact there is a publish button because it's like I'm a real newspaper writer."



However, Payne's blog also brought about controversy within her school.  Her deftly honest accounts and ratings of her school's lunches created a backlash from school leadership----which, according to www.news.com.au, led to a worldwide phenomenon.

This 9-year-old did more than write a food blog, she created a movement.  Media from around the world began following Payne's blog, and as a result, Payne gained the attention of food revolutionist Jamie Oliver and won several awards.

Martha's story provides the framework for reasons why teachers should be integrating blogging into the classroom.  Here are four reasons students should blog in the classroom:

1. Provides Students with an Opportunity to Develop Voice and Choice
Blogging enhances student engagement through ownership.  Students not only have choice in content, but also in expression, which allows students to develop an individual writing voice.  Students have the opportunity to develop a point of view and express that point of view in their own style.  As a result, students develop a relationship with their target audience.  This provides students with the opportunity to experiment with sentence structure, tone, punctuation, use of appropriate slang, jargon, etc.

2.  Allows for Real-World Writing and Real-World Collaboration
Blogging provides real-world writing experiences because blogs are live and active on the worldwide web. Blogs demonstrate an important lesson to students:  writing isn't just read by the teacher!  Instead, readers across the world can access, comment, and collaborate in academic discussions on common interests via blogs.  In addition, blogs provide real-world avenues for authentic collaboration.  The commenting feature on blog posts allow for predicable and unpredictable responses from target audiences.  This generates authentic collaboration among readers and encourages academic critique of content.

3.  Promotes "Quadrant D" Learning Experiences
Dr. Willard R. Daggett's Rigor and Relevance Framework emphasizes Quadrant D learning experiences. Quadrant D combines real-world application of predictable and unpredictable experiences through the action continuum with higher-level thinking skills of the Knowledge Taxonomy such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation through the thinking continuum.  Blogging provides an avenue for students to engage in Quadrant D learning across curricular content through designing, composing new pieces of works in a genre, rewriting, making inferences about effects of history on current situations or issues, proposing possible solutions, teaching others, providing advice based on research, devising plans or creating proposals, etc.

4.  Aligns to Common Core Literacy Standards for All Content Areas
Blogging also provides a way to integrate the Common Core State Standards in Literacy for ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects as well as integrating the corresponding College and Career Readiness (CCR) Anchor Standards.

  • Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (WHST.6-12.4, W4-12.4) 
  • Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (WHST.6-12.5, W4-12.5)
  • Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology's capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically. (WHST.6-12.6, W4-12.6)

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