Blogging ideas and impacts
Many articles cite numerous ways that students can utilize blogging programs in school, but I think, just maybe, I have come up with a unique one. What if students used their blogs to write a serial story? It could be like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type story, and other students can comment on what they would like to see happen next. Students could do all different genres and themes, and their classmates could choose to follow the genre or theme that they prefer.
“What issues or positive consequences can you foresee happening as a result of utilizing blogs in schools?”
An issue I see is just jumping over the nuts and bolts-type hurdles that are inevitable when trying to implement new technology in schools. There are permissions to be granted, “bugs” with the interface to overcome, and lots of time spent moderating posts on student blogs.
Positive consequences are abundant. Students will have to learn about ethical use of information and that what they put on the internet lasts forever. They will most likely spend more time editing and reviewing their posts because they know the blogs will be read by their classmates, at least. Students will most likely be more motivated to read and write when they are doing so on the web and publishing their work. They will learn about having a responsibility to their audience and commitment to a task if they have a blog with an established readership, especially if they are writing a serial that others are invested in.
For Teacher Librarians, blogs are a great way to get out information to a wide audience quickly. It is also a way for TLs to talk about all of the services the school library has to offer it’s teachers, and why certified, master’s level Teacher Librarians are crucial to a successful school. Essentially, blogs are a great way for TLs to break the stereotypes of old and announce that libraries have evolved dramatically since the explosion of technology, and now the library media center is truly the information and collaboration epicenter of the school.
Filed under 611, Uncategorized | Comments (4)Blogging in the SLMC
So, for my first post, I’ll tackle the issue of blogging in the school library. How can I use blogging when I become a TL? I see myself blogging from the beginning. When I start a new job, a blog provides a great way for me to introduce myself to a large body of staff, students and students’ parents. I can talk about what I envision for the library, and why I love being a teacher-librarian. After I am settled, I can use blogs to highlight upcoming library events, post book reviews, showcase new web2.0 tools and great classroom ideas that I find, and suggest new resources for teaching and learning. I would definitely find room to advocate the library and why it is such an important part of the school. I can back up my statements with the plentiful number of studies that have been conducted to prove it.
Ideally it would be great to have 2 blogs, one for teachers and one for students, since the 2 viewing audiences have their own unique needs and reasons for reading. The one caveat to all this is time, and how o find enough of it to write a blog worth reading.
As for whether it would be a library or a librarian blog, I guess it would be a “mashup” (to use web 2.0 terminology) of both.
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