I teach first grade at a private school and have been thinking about how I could successfully use a blog at this level. At first, I did not think a blog would be that useful for a first grade classroom. The more I thought about it, I realized I was completely wrong and I finally came up with a few good ideas on how to use a blog at the first grade level. The first idea that came to mind was to use the blog as a tool to communicate with parents. Most parents are becoming more and more savvy in the field of technology and are also becoming more familiar with blogs. Some parents find it easier to communicate with their child's teacher online because they are around computers all day.
I also like the idea of putting up student work on a blog in first grade. First Graders are very eager to show off their work. If it is on a blog, this would allow for friends and relatives across the country to see their work. The blog could also be used to interact with other classes in the community, or even from afar.
"...the fastest-growing age group for using the Internet is 2 to 5 year olds." (NetDay News, 2005, as cited in Richardson, 2010, p. 7)This would indicate that first grade is not too early to introduce technology. First-graders are brimming with curiousity and a natural desire to learn new ideas. Combining that excitement with the Internet could have a far-reaching positive outcome.
ReplyDeleteUsing a blog to allow friends and family across the country to see students' work also has the potential for students to gain support from many sources. It is a way to create stronger bonds between family members and friends. This, in turn, will be an encouragement to the student.
Communicating with parents is a good use for a blog. It is a user-friendly, non-threatening way for a parent to stay informed about what is going on in the classroom. Richardson (2010) suggests using a blog as a place to publish information about class rules,course descriptions, and assignments. Having all the classroom information in one place would be convenient for parents.
It seems that safety would be an issue, particularly because of the age of your students. How will you handle safety issues on your blog?
Debbie VanOtteren
A blog for parents is a great way to use a blog for the operational part of a classroom. Were you thinking about possibly training the parents to use the blog? Back to school night type days may be hard for this but if you held a workshop another night I am sure you would get much more parent participation. Hopefully you could teach them a thing or two about a technology that, I am sure, all of them do not know about. You could add a lesson about an RSS feed in because that would benefit them in their everyday life and your blog could be a part of something they look at every day. You might even want to offer the kids extra credit for getting their parents to go on and post something at the beginning of the year. They might be just as shy as the kids at first but if it benefits their child they would be very willing to give it a try right away. Just thinking about this is making me want to try this out as well!
ReplyDeleteBesides the challenge of getting parents to actually post on the blog I worry about what parents may say on it as well. Hopefully they would use common sense in posting a personal issue but that just need to be part of the lesson on the workshop night. You never know.