I had students ask questions via the blog post ASK QUESTIONS here by way of comments. I then responded, in the hopes that students would look at other questions/answers before leaping with their question if it is already answered. Ideally, I hoped to save time in 1:1 q and a, when all students could benefit from the dialog. Sure enough, the blog found success! Big time! The night before the paper was due, several students really took advantage of the q/a format and got help from me while working on their papers. Better, they helped one another, in answering questions, and in support when "I'M FREAKING OUT!" was posted. The support and sharing was a delight to see for me. And the mad typing, while time consuming, had me excited for them. I know the comments helped them, a great deal. For now, it took a chunk of extra time for me, but 1. helped them much, 2. encouraged student: student help, 3. provided a sounding board, 4. can be used and modified for time streamlining next time.In contrast, my juniors had the same situation offered on my e302 blog site, but did not take advantage nearly as much, nor did they really engage in helping one another. Interesting in that they all had the same introduction from me into using it; however, I did not have a class period with the juniors where I would only answer questions in the computer lab from the blog site (since the juniors did not have the computer lab available as a class). I guess it has to be started there.
4 comments:
Nicole,
This is so exciting to read! I think you may be right that your juniors (or any students?)need to actually see and try it out before they venture out on their own.
Idea. What about double blogging this to each of your course blogs and making it an assignment(?) for parents to read so they can see the benefit to your students? Maybe they could leave a comment with their own thoughts? (Could be scary!)
Also, I wonder about having your juniors take a peek at the Freshman blog to see how they used it?
I appreciate the idea of “double blogging”, but really haven’t a clue what you mean by it. Totally no clue. Today I did bait the juniors to try the blog as my freshmen did. I showed them the frosh. site. Several complained about blogs; one stated that he hated the word “blogging”. I pressed on; so far: no bites. I’ll continue fishing. You know the saying, teach a man to fish…
Sorry, Nicole! My bad on "double blogging". What I mean by that is to make the same post to more than one blog. I thought it would be nice for parents to read about your experience with this approach so they have an understanding of how you extend learning beyond the classroom to help your students.
This post and the comments describing your continued efforts to encourage participation among your students with the blog are enlightening. It's especially important for me to understand how you deal with roadblocks such as student resistance to blogging. I did not know some were so adverse to this process. I would like to know why "blogging" is a hated word.
I'm glad to read you will continue fishing as I continue to experience classroom blogging vicariously through you!
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