Blog Uses Depends on the Course

I found the article, Classroom blogging in the service of student-centered pedagogy: Two high school teachers’ use of blogs, to be very interesting. As a high school teacher, it was exciting to see some material that pertains to what I am doing right now as opposed to what I might be doing in the future. That said, I think I focused most on the six blogging practices and where they might fit best. Based on their results and my own experiences, I think in a high school classroom, Sharing Resources and Recording Lesson Highlights would be the most beneficial. I think that if a teacher is going to supplement their curriculum with a website or blog, they should only have one place for students to go for content, handouts and reviews, as well as for conversation. I loved the idea of each student being responsible for posting "Lesson of the Day". When you have to reexplain a concept, it forces you to really learn it. I'm not sure that all high school students would contribute well to post/response type use as was also observed in these two situations, but it might be interesting in higher level classes in English or Social Studies. I am also working with professional devleopment of teachers at my school and I actually think a blog would be a great tool to use with our New Teacher Mentoring Class. We don't have a CMS at our school, so this would be a great way to place much of the content online and allow for discussions amongst the teacher and mentors across the district. In this scenario, Response to Prompts and Reflection on Learning could be used very effectively. Overall, I think you need to know the make-up of your class and your content to know how to effectively use a blog in your course.