Saturday, April 19, 2008

Using Blogs to Advance Literacy In A Bilingual Classroom

I recently had the opportunity to represent my district and present at a NASTECH (Nassau Association of School Technology) conference on April 17, 2007. I was asked to talk about using blogs in the early elementary classroom. The following is an excerpt of what I spoke about and a short video that I created with my students to explain why blogging is a great tool.

I am a teacher of a second grade transitional bilingual class. I am also working on my second Master’s in Educational Technology. I noticed that my students’ literacy skills were very poor this year and getting them animated about writing was a struggle. I thought about all of the different web 2.0 tools that I was learning about, but was disappointed to learn that very few teachers used them with early elementary students. Deciding that I would try it anyway, I chose blogging because it simulated journal writing.
A blog is an online publishing tool that enables people to easily publish their loves, passions, dislikes, peeves, discoveries, and insights. The blogs are posted in reverse chronological order and may contain text, images, or multimedia. Not only do the authors (bloggers) post their thoughts and feelings on a web page for the world to view, but blog readers can comment, thus creating a dialogue between the blogger and the community he inhabits. This can lead to an online community of readers and writers.
I researched many different blog sites and found David Warlick’s “Landmark Project-Class Blogmeister” (http://classblogmeister.com ) to be the best for my students. I choose this site because it was specifically designed for classroom use and because of all the student controls that are built in. For example, students and or others who wish to leave comments cannot post anything until the teacher approves it.
After setting up my class blog site, I explained to my students that they were going to keep an online journal. I discussed rules of Internet safety with my students. We talked about personal information. We discussed the dangers of posting too much about ourselves or our families. We discussed the proper use of blogs and about cyber-bullying. This was something completely new and different. The children were very excited.
I named the site “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” and decided that our blog would serve as a resource to help strengthen our literacy skills through self-expression, opinions, and communication of topics that we are learning about and exploring in the classroom.
We have been blogging for about 5 months now, and the students’ literacy skills have improved tremendously. They are taking risks with their writing and many of them are developing a sense of voice. We blog every Friday and my students are eager to share what they’ve learned, read what others have posted, and collaborate with other kids around the world. Some of my students even force their parents to bring them to the library so that they can share their blogs with their families (since most do not own computers).
In the future, I would like to focus on a way to have parents more involved in our class blog. I have many ideas. Stay tuned.


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