I believe that the use of blogging can be used in many positive ways in the classroom. The first way that is mentioned is that blogging can be used as motivation for those students who are afraid to participate in class discussions. Not every student that I will encounter with want to speak in class or share their opinions. If you have a blog up for students to use they can comment in writing rather then speaking in front of everyone in the class. This also helps students with their reading and writing skills out of the classroom. If the students are constantly reading each others comments and also replying in their own thoughts with writing them down or typing. It is also a great place for students to discuss with each other in case they don't understand a topic from the class or they would like to hear other ideas from students.
As far as using these in my PE class I could use blogs for students to discuss what they feel about the class. I would use these suggestions to improve my class and make it more beneficial for the students. I would also ask students what they may have thought of the activity that we did that day. This would also be a great evaluation tool for myself to use after teaching a class. It would be interesting to see what the students really thought of the class. I believe this would help me become a better teacher in the long run.
And the more you continue to think out of the box, the more creative your possibilities will become. Also, since you can make them private, the Posts could be kept private with the instructor (if the student didn't want to publicly share their thoughts.
ReplyDeleteTime permitting, please add a few of the links that could be a useful resource in the future.