Blogs in the classroom

In the classroom, blogs can serve for a variety of purposes. As the instructor it can allow for communication with the students in regards to upcoming assignments or general announcements concerning the class. For the student, it could provide a forum for discussion, collaboration and support of assignments beyond the classroom setting; encouraging peer-to-peer learning. It may simply provide a “typical” blog space for journaling.

Issues however, could potentially arise from allowing students to blog for a particular class. Obviously, appropriateness of discussion and/or material added to the blogs could become a problem. Because student responses are not face to face, there is a potential for harmful comments to be made to one another that are not related to the task at hand. Boundaries would certainly need to be laid out in advance.

Blogs may provide advantages over traditional forms of instruction in several ways. It may provide a voice for those students who may otherwise feel to shy or embarrassed to participate in a typical classroom setting. Additionally, it could allow for more collaboration among peers as well as more independently working students.

Relative Advantage

In my opinion, the notion of “Relative Advantage” with respect to improving technology implementation methods would address two things: (1) how effective a new technology is or has the potential to be as compared to the existing technology; and (2) how the new technology can be effectively implemented so that the user will benefit from the improvement.

I think that in a large classroom, many individuals could benefit from a more individualized technology that would allow for participation without necessarily having to “put themselves out there.” (I believe that there is a new technology out there that addresses this issue. I don’t know what it is called, however, it allows for each student to hold a hand-held device and each student can respond to the teacher’s question silently and individually).

From the student perspective, the student will have the opportunity to be more involved in the class by responding without the fear of not having the right answer and vocalizing this in front of a classroom full of their peers.

From the teacher’s perspective, this would increase classroom participation and allow for identification as to the skill and knowledge levels of the individual students.