Blogs in the Classroom

Incorporating blogs into your classroom can be an excellent tool in helping students to learn. However, like many things there is a disadvantage to using technology like blogs in the classroom as well.

Some advantages of blogging in a classroom is that students can use them to improve reading and writing skills. For instance, students can receive writing instructions from their teacher and go ahead and write their paper or thoughts on the topic in a blog. This will help students improve their skills by having a teacher be able to give feedback on the blog that was written. Students can than go in and easily correct or add anything they like to it. This also gives good instruction to peer editing where students can comment on each others blog and thoughts. Another advantage for online blogs for students is that their parents can go online and see what they are writing about and learning in the classroom. This gives the parents more up to date information on what their students are doing.

Some disadvantages of using this technology in your classroom is the possible concern for the safety of the children. For instance, like in a regular classroom setting teachers are to do a prevention plan on bullying. If you are online and blogging there is such a thing called cyber bullying that can occur. For instance, a rude or mean comment to another student about ones writing. The other comments are to be positive and constructive, and not making fun of or picking on someone because of their skill ability. Another disadvantage is in schools with lower economic standings they may not have the accessibility of computers like other schools. This is unfortunate because students and teachers would not be able to do lessons online, such as blogging.