Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Creating a Community of Learners Through Blogging

I teach 4th and 5th grade students identified for gifted services from six different elementary schools. I teach a different group of students each day of the week. During each class session my students work on a center topic they self-select out of over 50 choices. Students work independently on their centers using a contract as a guide. 

I am interested in using blogging for students to have a forum to share their learning and projects from their centers. At any time, it is very possible for all of my students to be working on different centers or activities within a center. Blogging could provide a unifying experience for my students to communicate with each other about their centers. Students attending on different days, but working on the same self selected center could share ideas, interests, and projects with each other. Blogging could remove the barrier of not attending the center the same day. Students who might otherwise never meet, but share similar interests, could further their ideas and learning by collaborating with each other through a blog. Additionally, students could share projects and products from their centers with a larger audience and receive feedback from each other. Ideally, the blogs could spark a student's interest in a new topic by reading about and discussing their classmates' center experiences.

Has anyone had experience using blogging to share independent learning projects? I am also interested in suggestions for organizing the posts

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2 comments:

  1. JuliejmMarch 15, 2009 at 7:03 AM

    I think that blogging for your students would be a wonderful idea. Gifted students would really use this as a learning experience and it will open their eyes to a new way of communicating and sharing with others. What do they do in their centers that could be shared through blogging?

    I haven’t had students communicate through blogs before, but I believe that it will be a great learning experience!

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  2. Technology LearnerMarch 15, 2009 at 10:51 AM

    The kinds of activities students do in their center work differs greatly. Depending on the center, a student might be conducting an experiment, watching a video and answering questions, constructing models and analyzing them, writing creative responses or researching a topic, to name a few possibilities.

    The ideas I have currently for their blogs could include having the students describe new learning, share something interesting they learned, or ask a question that someone who had already completed the center could possibly answer.

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