I currently teach general math and pre-algebra in the 7th grade. My rationale on why a blog is a good tool for my classroom is because it would be an interactive way for the students to comment and help each other with their homework assignments.
*What purpose would the blog serve?
I would use blogging in my classroom to keep the students and their parents up to date on what they students are doing in the classroom along with what they will be doing in the classroom. It will also be a place where parents could post comments on anything that may be concerning them or comments that they want to make about the class in general.
*Is it a place for students to interact about content?
This would be a place where students could interact with each other to help one another out when they may get stuck on a problem. For instance, we are currently working on finding the surface area of of prisms and cylinders. Many of my students are struggling with this material. If I had a blog set up, they could be talking amongst themselves to help one another try to figure out the problems. Peer to peer teaching is sometimes better than teacher to student teaching.
*How does using a blog enhance the lesson?
Using a blog is a good way to involve the students in helping one another on their math homework. The blog will also invite other bloggers from around the globe to maybe help my students understand the material they are discussing and maybe give them another way of thinking about the subject matter and how to solve it.
I also thought about doing a similar "help" blog in my Accounting 2 class. Students are often frustrated when they have a question (typically on a weekend) and they cannot get a hold of me or I do not answer their email.
ReplyDeleteI would be concerned about parents commenting on a class blog. I have dealt with many parents and most are lovely but you get an occasional parent who says something not at all appropriate for school. A way to combat that would be to control the comments that are posted. I am unsure of whether it is possible to create a widget that would create a section that is private (for parent comments) and those would go just to you until you decide to post them?
I love the idea of peer to peer teaching. Sometimes it is more effective for a student to explain something to a struggling student then it is for me to explain it! I spoke to my Accounting 2 students about this today as well and one student said they do it in Physics class but they made a great point that you would need to ask students to be on the blog at a certain time every day because not all students are on the computer at the same time!
Wow, you have an very effective way of using blogging in your class. Math is difficult subject for many students, and it has been proven that students learn from their peers. Peer to peer assistance is a great tool to implement in blogging. I think this should be a wonderful asset to your math classes. Should you choose to do this in your class, let us know how it goes.
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