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• Elona Hartjes, MEd Candidate, Ontario Certified Teacher

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The 5 W’s and 1 H of a Classroom blog?  OK, OK, I know that the 5  W’s and 1 H of a Classroom Blog isn’t the most creative title for a post, but sometimes tried and true is OK, and all teachers know there’s nothing more tried and true than the 5 W’s and the 1 H, so here it is.

Although my students are pretty digital savy seeing that most spend hours and hours online visiting Facebook, YouTube, playing online games and text messaging, I can’t assume they know about  blogs and blogging so  I show them the following video.  I love it.  They love it. As you’ll see after viewing it, Common Craft , the company who makes these educational videos, believes in the KISS principle. I believe in the KISS principle. Keep It Simple for  Students. What’s not to like!  Common Craft also has videos on TeacherTube-great when YouTube is blocked like it is at my school. Grrrr!!!!

See, wasn’t that a great video, especially for students who are visual learners or for those struggling or  reluctant readers in your class who loath the printed page.

My students are usually quite excited when I introduce the idea of a class blog.  They like the idea of  writing blog posts and having others read what they’ve  written. To  be more precise, they like  not having to write something using pen and paper, and they like knowing that someone other than their teacher will actually read what they’ve written.  In the two years that I’ve had the class blogs,  only one student has asked me not to publish some of his work.   I’ve got no problem with that. At least, he was thinking and writing.

I suspect that the kids also like the blog because when their work gets published it  looks so professional-just like the articles in the papers, magazines or even in textbooks. Some of my students have really messy handwriting and are embarrassed by it,  and some of my students  find the process  of forming letters difficult to do so they write as little as possible.  When they type their work and use the spell checker, their work looks the same as everyone else’s when it gets published.  What they’ve written doesn’t look stupid, so they don’t feel stupid. They don’t have to be embarrased. That’s definately a good thing with reluctant and struggling students.

At first, I was a bit apprehensive about having my students contribute to a class blog.  Some of them can be very creative in a michevious way- if you know what I mean.  I told my students that  I didn’t want to have to take early retirement because something went wrong.  I can honestly say there haven’t  been any problems.  More about that later.

I wasn’t only concerned about  inappropriate material appearing on the class blog, I was also concerned about student safety. I didn’t want the class blog to put my students in harm’s way.   We’ve all read the horror stories about online bullying or harassment or even worse.  Fortunately, it was easy to put all the saftey  measures in place to protect my students so there have been no problems in the past two years.

In subsequent posts, I”ll share with you how I made the class blog a safe and inviting place for my students, and why I chose the particular blogging  tool I use for my class blogs.  Oh yes, I’ll also share the letter I sent home to parents to tell them about the class blog. I got wonderful positive feedback from parents about the blog.  I’ll tell y0u more about that later too.

See you then.

Related Posts

• School starts next week so it’s time to dust off my Web 2.0 tool kit.
• Trying to meet the challenge of teaching critical thinking skills to kids who hate to read or write.
• Digital technology- nightmare in room 224
• My Web 2.0 tool kit for struggling or reluctant readers and writers
• It’s not literacy any more; it’s literacies.

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  These are my personal views and not those of my employer.