It became a place for the final step in the writing process students publishing their work. The purpose of the blog ended up being a little less global. However, because of school policy that restricted student internet use on the Canadian side of the Pacific, the project never got off the ground (As I write this and reflect upon the challenges at the time, I realize I now know the Google Hack that would have solved the problem). It would have been a great opportunity for students to enter into global collaboration. The original vision of this blog was to have two fifth grade classes, one on each side of the Pacific Ocean (Hsinchu City, Taiwan and Vancouver, Canada) share and comment on each other’s poetry. If you are interested in having a closer look, send me an email and I will grant you access via your Gmail account. Click here to see what happens if an uninvited person tries to view it. This particular blog was designed to be limited to students and teacher interaction. The blog is open to the public.Ī blog as a platform for student work and peer feedback The above blog, which can be viewed by clicking here, is simply a platform to share information for parents, assignments for students, and at times student work. The following are some examples of what I’ve done in the classroom with fifth and sixth grade students.Ī blog as a parent teacher communication tool Regardless of age and ability, blogging and other applications are currently being used from Kindergarden and up by teachers around the world. It depends on the grade level, students current skills, available technology, and what a teacher and/or students want to accomplish. There are various ways that a blog can be used in a classroom. The second example below demonstrates this option. However, Blogger can be configured so that it is secure and available only to those who have been given access. Most blogs are public to enable the students to have the opportunity to collaborate with peers locally and globally. In my own experience as classroom teacher using various technologies, I have seen this kind of independence begin to emerge. Research has shown that when people are given these three opportunities (autonomy, mastery, and purpose) for growth and independence they will produce a higher quality of work and be more motivated. You can grab the Blogger app now on the App Store.How can a blog enhance and redefine learning? Blogging and other online applications can be used to create learning opportunities for students in which they are able to build autonomy, mastery, and purpose within the context of school and their lives. There have been other apps for iOS that allow publishing to Blogger, like BlogPress, but this is the first official one. It is a start, however, and Google seems to like dropping apps like this and then iterating on them in public, so hopefully we’ll see some updates coming in the future that add the basic necessities. There are a dozen other alternatives that offer more features on the App Store. It seems incredibly bare-bones at this point. No formatting, no image adjustment, not even a choice of fonts or even a button to add a link. You also can’t do much more than write and publish. The app seems to stick to the Google ‘less is more’ aesthetic, with a two-tone orangesickle interface. You can save your posts as drafts or publish them immediately and browse the list of drafts and posts in your archive. There is also support for tagging a post with a location. The app allows you to publish from multiple Blogger accounts, post images from the gallery or the camera and label your blog posts.
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