My Top Twelve Uses for Blogs in a classroom

1.       My favorite use for my younger students: Tattling Tiger. Students tend to tattle so much on each other. I am going to start a blog next year for the students to tell to tattling tiger (clip art of tiger at the top of the screen). Students will write in their complaints. I will monitor these and give attention to those who are valid. Students will need to have anonymous blogging ability for this one to work. Maybe allow students to write their complaints in the comments section below?

2.       Use blogs to talk about perspectives, whether it’s the author’s viewpoint or that of one of the characters in a story.

3.       Use as a journaling tool for students

4.       Freewriting (prewriting for a writing project)—from our readings: E-learn Space Website (Siemens, 2002)

5.       Take an issue from a classroom lecture and ask students to apply it to a real world situation

6.       E-portfolio (Richardson, 2010)

7.       Blog the summary for each chapter in a book (students would not be able to look at each other’s blogs for this one).

8.       Back and forth response between students and someone else (author, motivator, etc). (Richardson, 2010, p. 23)

9.       Between colleagues on a school committee, or between people involved in parent/teacher organizations (Richardson, 2010, p.24).

10.   Use them to share teaching tips between grade levels. Some teachers just have better ways to teach a certain skill. This may even avoid all of the sometimes pointless weekly or monthly grade-level meetings.

11.   New form of classroom newsletter

12.   As an exit ticket at the end of the day. Students can list the top ten most important things they learned today, or a summary of a particular subject.