The School Principal Blog

In blogs, educators are discovering a new tool for engaging students who live in a world increasingly dominated by technology. By incorporating blogging into the school environment, educators can capitalize on the social media explosion, turning a potentially isolating medium into a window of discovery and self-expression as well as a bridge to the broader learning community.

Naturally when confronted with change there will be some resistance among educators to adopt and embrace this new medium, just as the advent of the internet posed a classroom challenge. Yet the reality is that today’s students are already immersed in social media and schools can either seize this new opportunity or play the proverbial ostrich. Ideally educators will lead and not lag behind at this transformative moment by encouraging youth to utilize this amazing technology as more than just an entertaining diversion.

Subscription services like EdublogsCampus, based on the WordPress platform, provide the technical framework and support to get schools started. Luckily for educators, tech-savvy students make excellent navigators, and engaging their help fosters a spirit of cooperation and sense of mastery. Classroom blogs can serve any number of purposes, as student newspaper, sharing information, writing practice, homework submission and testing forum, tracking tool for parents, online calendar, and so on. Security is of course a key concern, and web-hosting services offer custom access levels to assure student safety and confidentiality.

Blogging is a natural for facilitating extension of lessons, replacing old norms of information regurgitation and bringing lessons to life through interactivity, journaling and use of multi-media. Blogging provides the ideal avenue for sharing the learning experience, furnishing a vehicle for budding photographers, poets and artists to share their talent in a non-threatening forum. Blogs offer a creative outlet and give students a voice in what may be their only outlet or experience of being heard.

Beginning at the earliest school level, introducing blogs into the classroom fosters an environment of cooperation and recognition of the talents of each individual. At the same time, students are learning and applying technical and communication skills that they will take into the workplace, fulfilling the ideal of learning as an ongoing process and lifelong journey.

This post has been republished from the Intand Blog.

There is some debate on whether younger students should be encouraged to blog in school. Opponents may object to the student’s personal information being published online and have concerns for the safety of students. Proponents might say that the web is an increasingly important communication medium and students should learn how to use these new tools to better prepare for the future.

According to Wesley Fryer thought leader and author of the blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity,

I definitely think middle school students should be blogging, as well as elementary and high school students. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, students need to practice their writing skills regularly, and blogging is an excellent way to do this. We get better at things we practice regularly. It is common for kids to be required to read regularly during and after school, but regular writing assignments are less common. Blogging provides a way to both encourage and empower students students to write regularly.

The second main reason I’d argue students (including middle school students) should be blogging is so they can learn how to properly and responsibly use hyperlinked writing. Hyperlinks are one of the foundational technologies of the Internet. Students use hyperlinks by clicking on them, but far fewer create their own hyperlinks as part of their class assignments. Certainly the prevalence of social networking platforms has increased opportunities for students to use hyperlinks in their writing, but voluntary student use of social networking platforms does not necessarily result in students learning about hyperlinking and responsible use of hyperlinks.

Students should be encouraged to blog responsibly so they can discover their own voice. This is not the case for everyone, but some students are able to really discover their own voice via writing. The encouragement and positive feedback which young writers can receive through writing on blogs and other social websites can play an important role in defining identity for a young person. Students can and do often discover the power of their words, and the importance of sharing thoughts as well as ideas.

I personally think it is great when students blog. A blog is like a individual’s personal newspaper column. Blogs require updated content, which encourages a blogger to think critically and write often, an important skill in the workplace. Student’s can also learn about publishing online and if they are really ambitious they can learn about HTML code to customize their site. The great thing about the web, is that anyone can publish. It doesn’t matter if they are a Pulitzer prize winner or a student. If you write great stuff, people will read it. Who knows, a student who starts a blog today could become the next William Shakespeare tommorow.

What do you think? Should schools encourage students to blog? Is there educational value in blogging?

Photo by torres21

A survey by Vanderbilt University found that 50 percent of teachers “are not prepared to teach students how to write well and rarely assign complex writing tasks.” The research by Vanderbilt professor Steve Graham was published this spring in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

According to the article at Vanderbilt’s News Network:

The lack of writing and writing instruction was more pronounced in social studies and science, but even language arts teachers provided little writing instruction for their students,” Graham said. “Another disturbing finding was the sizable number of teachers who made few or no adaptations in their teaching efforts to assist weaker writers.

According to the results, teachers rarely ask high school students to complete assignments that involve writing more than a single paragraph, and most common writing assignments involve little to no analysis or interpretation. Some teachers reported using a variety of effective writing practices, but indicated that the use was infrequent, removing their effectiveness.

Writing is an important tool for educational, occupational and social success,” Graham said. “Writing instruction needs to be reformed to improve high school student work as well as strengthening the ability for success in college and beyond.

This is an alarming study because the ability to write effectively is an important skill in the workplace and you could argue it is becoming more important as professionals are more likely to write for a work related blog whether they are in business, journalism, or other fields. The growth of the cell phone and social media culture can develop bad habits such as poor grammar and punctuation that should be addressed in the classroom. Teens with cellphones avg 2,272 text messages a month, compared with 203 calls according to a Nielsen study.

One simple way that could help students to become more effective writers is to encourage student blogs. Blogs require students to write long form compositions that require analysis and critical thinking. Since it is publicly viewable, students will want to proofread for correct spelling, punctuation and grammar. It is also a fun way to express yourself and can even encourage a passion for writing.