There are wide variety of ways to use Weblogs in schools:
- Class Portal: a great entry point for Weblog use is to build a class portal to commucate information about the class and to archive course materials. Many students really enjoy acquiring course materials in the faddish and convenient method. Parents also love the transparency and the ability to access class materials.
- Online Filing Cabinet and E-Portforlio:the class can go paperless as students simply post their work online for peer and teacher response.Firstly, students never misplace their work. Second, having all of their work organized in one place makes for some great opportunity for student reflection. Finally, work on a Weblog can be shared with others who might be interested or invested in the student's progress.
- Collaborative Space: Weblog creates spaces where students can collaborate with otheres online.
From myself, I will be interested in using Weblog as the class portal and students' individual/collaborative working spaces, students would be expected to use 2nd language in Weblog at home or other places with internet connection.
Two official learning standards met from ACTFL（National Standards For Foreign Language Education）:
Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
Standard 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting
Those are very good ideas for using blogs to develop skills and for communication with parents.
ReplyDeleteZhili, I really like your ideas. Like you, I think that Weblogging is a great way to communicate. It is also a great tool for students to use and be interested in. We all know that our students are, for the most part, highly influenced by technology. This may be a way for them to show some quality work by using a method that they can relate to.
ReplyDeleteUsing blog as a class portal can be effective as well as cool way to communicate with the parents. When I went to an elementary school for observation, I found a teacher using the students' flash drive to give them homeworks and other informer to their parents and I thought it was a kind of cool. However, now thinking back, it would be such a demanding routine for teachers to copy all of the material to the 25 flash drivers of each student. I believe there must have been some reasons she was using that way, but, when possible, using a blog to communicate with parents could be such a revolutionary way compared to the flash drive method.
ReplyDeleteYes, I also really like the idea of using a blog as a way of communicating with parents. In our fast-paced culture, teachers and parents may not always have the time to communicate directly as often they would like. I think it's also often a challenge for many American parents to get their kids to talk to them about what they are doing and learning at school. A blog can be a great way of keeping parents up to date on what has been happening in the classroom, what their children have been learning, and even what kinds of projects or assignments they should be working on. I agree that it's a good way of promoting transparency between teacher, parents, and students.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of E-Portforlio! It saves paper. We can save it forever and retrieve it easily^_^
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way as you do about using blogs as online filing cabinet. It's more convenient than traditional filing cabinet as you could draw material from it anytime anywhere as long as internet access is available.
ReplyDelete