Why use Blogs?

One way to help students to communicate with one another is through a blog, such as this one. It’s a great interactive way for students to communicate with one another. This is the first year I’ve been introduced to blogs and I find them extremely useful. It’s definitely an easy way to get students and parents to build a classroom community, as well as becoming involved with one another. Parents get to see what their students are learning, and the students get a chance to talk to their classmates. When in the classroom, some students can become nervous to speak in front of others and won’t participate, or they feel they won’t have enough time to respond. It’s also sometimes difficult to get to all of the children’s ideas during the day.

Blogging is a great way to get those students who are shy to help gain their self-esteem by writing a response to a blog. It’s a way for them to see other’s responses and notice that the other students may feel the same way. This is a way for students to express their ideas in a safe way –they may not feel the embarrassment they may have when speaking in class. Yet, it’s also important when doing blogs to have a class discussion the day or two afterwards so those students can practice sharing their ideas. Sometimes students can get anxious when ‘put on the spot’ to come up with a response to someone. With blogs, however, they will already have their response and opinion, as well as thinking critically about other classmates posts. This can lead to a rich discussion and increase in social literacy by having conversations where all the students can express their opinions!