Thursday, January 13, 2011

Using Blogs in the Classroom


I teach geometry and algebra 2 at the high school level and am looking to begin a blog for my classes that will create a place for students to collaborate on the content of the course, as well as provide addition opportunities for them to better understand the material. Being a math teacher, most of the work students are assessed on has little to do with writing and is focused on problem solving.  So introducing blogging in my courses would have to be done in a creative fashion.  My initial thoughts are to setup up a site that uses pictures of common problems from a section and have students explain the process in which they use would use to solve it.  According to Will Richardson, “One of the biggest potentials of Weblogs is the ability to create spaces where students can collaborate with others online.”  So in this classroom portal space, students could discuss with one another where they are having problems on their work and help one another.  Presumably, I could post my advice, or at least come the next day already knowing their struggles.

Another good starting point may be to post a weekly challenge problem that students can try to solve, while allowing for them to collaborate their ideas on how to attack it.  This would hopefully generate a competitive atmosphere where students who want to be challenged can showcase their knowledge.  I would make it mandatory for solutions to be submitted on the blog in a well-organized document to foster professionalism. 

Another direction I could head would be to create a blog site that harbors links to informational sites on the topics of the course.  This would be great in supporting them from home when they have trouble finding time to set up meetings with me or other tutors.  I could link sites that further explain the topic, or videos from Youtube, Brightstorm, and other similar video collections.  After all, “Being able to connect ideas and resources via linking is one of blogging’s most important strengths,” (Richardson, 2010).  This would not only aid struggling students, but also help students who missed class and are falling behind.  It would also enhance lessons by making them mobile and showing the material from another point of view. 

Lastly, I could connect the blog links to the school website for easy of location or possibly show students how to create a Google Reader account.  If they had their own RSS feed to these blogs, checking them for updates daily would be much quicker.  Looking ahead, this seems like a large step in the right direction.  Now all I have to do is master the technique of blogging myself so I can successfully model it to the students.  


References

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

4 comments:

  1. Your comments about creating space for your students to collaborate are excellent. I teach English and that would be the primary focus for my blog. This sight would be useful for any additional resources that would help students accomplish their assignments. This could also help differeniate instruction for teachers.

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  2. This is a wonderful way to use blogging in the high school level. I wish my math teachers had a blog where I could go and ask questions or post problems I had difficulty with. I was definitely the shy type in school, who didn't like to raise their hand and ask too many questions, so a blog would be a great way to receive participation from all students.

    One area of difficulty you may face may be maintaining the blog. I don't know how many sections of geometry and algebra 2 you teach, but you could be faced with a lot of questions to respond to and answer. Incorporating the blog into your lessons, by answering their questions in class may be an option, or having students respond to their peers and help each other out could help to spread out the workload, so it's not solely on yourself.

    Overall great idea! I could see students being very excited about this!

    -Nicole Albamont

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  3. Yes, you make a good point Nicole. I will most certainly have to start this blogging process slowly, and maybe first focus on posting support links and having the students discuss problems with each other. The idea of spreading the workload is very important for my sanity, and also puts more power in the students hands. Ideally, I would just want to be a supervisor dropping a bit of guidance here and there. Thanks you for the feedback.

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  4. I love your ideas for using a blog to encourage student collaboration for problem solving. You are right; during math we focus so little on writing and put all our energy into problem solving. Nonetheless, I think the writing aspect of math is very important. Students should be able to explain their thought process using appropriate vocabulary. This is very difficult for my first graders and I suspect that even students in high school have difficulty explaining their thinking to you at times.

    One way I plan on using a blog in my classroom is to video tape my students in class working collaboratively to solve a problem. Then I am going to post the different videos on the blog and have students comment about what their peers did wrong and right. I think that this may work just as well with your students. It will not only have them focusing on the problem solving aspect but it will also require them to communicate why they think a classmates thought process was correct or incorrect.

    ~Carissa Martin

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