My school uses Schoology as our district-wide LMS. There are lots of things that you can do with a blog in a classroom that are no different than just using Schoology. Posting assignments and announcements, having students submit online assignments, the basic stuff. In these cases, it is easiest to just just stick with what the students and parents already know; no need to reinvent (or claim to have reinvented) the wheel. However, there are some things that can easily be done with a blog that can't be done, or at least not to the same extent, as with Schoology.
Before I get into these ideas of how I would use a blog in my specific classroom, let me share some important contextual details that allow these ideas to work for me. If you are in any kind of similar setting, these ideas might work for you too. On the other hand, you may want to start considering our differences and how you might adapt my ideas to fit your own classroom.
My Class
I teach at an alternative high school in Southeast Idaho. My students are primarily considered to be "at-risk" due to credit deficit, notable behavioral issues, academic gaps, or other things that would make a more traditional classroom setting very difficult for them. Many of my students have to work nightshifts while attending high school to help their parents pay rent, or to pay their own rent because they are 16 and living on their own. Many of my students are parents or parents-to-be. And a great deal of my students are in and out of juvenile detention facilities throughout the term but are still expected to keep up with their schoolwork.
At my school, students take three classes at a time, each lasting for two hours per day, five days per week, for a total of seven weeks. We call these seven week-terms "blocks" and they equate to a trimester of credit. They do not have electives, only core classes. Classes are often taken out of order as well due to the fact that most classes are credit-recovery. For example, a student can be taking Freshman English C at the same time as taking Junior English B even though they have not yet taken Freshman A or B or Sophomore English or Junior English A. This obviously has a major impact on how we teachers have to plan our curriculum. Additionally, we are a "no-homework school" and cannot assign work to be completed at home due to the fact that most of our students have other obligations outside of school and that they spend two hours a day in each class.
I teach Freshman and Sophomore English (although I am switching to juniors in the fall) and Speech. When I specify the grade-level I teach, that is only to suggest which standards I am teaching because, as you can expect from the situation I just explained, my "freshman" class is typically made up of about 20% true freshmen, 50% sophomores, 20% juniors, and 10% seniors. Talk about differentiation.
When it comes to digital literacy, my students are. on average, exceptionally low for their age. Sure they know how to scroll on TikTok but many of them don't know how to use the formatting tools on a Google Doc, send an email, or even navigate to their Google Drive.
Essentially, for me to incorporate more than just the most basic of technology into my class, I need to be prepared to start from the bottom and build them up to where I need them to be as quickly as possible. Remember, my classes are only seven weeks long.
Okay, now that you know the context, here's my application.
My Weblogs
1. Weekly Question
I would love to have a Weekly Question posted on the blog for each week of each class. For example, Eng1a -Week 1. During the first week of the block, students in my Freshman English A (or Eng1a) class would go onto the blog and comment on the post for the Week 1 question. They could then read a few comments from previous students in the class and respond to them.
2. Project Showroom
Whenever I do creative projects in class, I like to keep the best submissions to use as examples in the future. On the blog, I could have a page for each project with the rubric and digitized versions (if the project wasn't already digital) of the best submissions.
Those are all the ideas I have so far but I'm sure I will be posting more in the future.
Research
Why blog in class though? Sure, it's a cool, flashy, techy, woke, whatever, but it's supported by research too! The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has published standards that outline what students should be able to do online. Some of these skills include:
- Understanding the basic fundamentals of various current technologies (ISTE Standard 1.1d)
- Being a digital citizen (ISTE Standard 1.2)
- Being a global collaborator (ISTE Standard 1.7)
