Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Module 2 - Blogs

I didn't really have a good idea about the use of blogs.  I understand the rationale behind them but was unsure how to apply them to the classroom.  However, in a recent lesson, after a particularly slow and poorly structured lesson in Work Studies, which the students were very much bored with, I was particularly frustrated with the output from students and my own lack of planning.

Therefore, I spoke to CR about the use of blogs in class and was able to build on this very poor lesson to have the students engaged and focussed for the lesson.  I created a blog on myPLS with three tasks attached.  This was posted and students then, during the lesson and after, had to address all three areas.  In the next lesson I will build on this.  I intend to reply to the students who have finished this, however, students will also have a chance to reply to someone else's blog as well.

The benefits of this are three-fold:
1.  I can check students' work immediately.
2.  Students were able to read other students' work easily
3.  The tasks that neeed to be addressed in the blog cut across a number of thinking skills - from low to high order.

Since then, I have also used a blog to allow our student leadership group to communicate together to formulate an annual report and plan their portfolios.

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