Educational Blogging

Blogging presents many benefits, but also many challenges

Blogging in an educational sense is the "... individual exploration of ideas of personal interest through frequent online posts, documenting ideas as they emerge." (Boltivets et al., 2018). A study on pre-service teachers found that blogs were being under utilized, as they were used more for information sharing and not for reflection or discussions. Even though this study showed that blogs were not being used to their full potential, blogs can still be used to improve skills such as reading, reflecting, literacy, and building community. The challenges associated with the goals of blogging is that it tends to follow a consistent design pattern, not made for lifelong learning. To combat these challenges, educators need to use different methods of allowing blogs to be published for their students. Because mobile phones are such a prevalent tool in our lives, finding and using a mobile app for blogging seems to be a preferred solution for phones. The benefits of blogging are too important to give up on in the classroom. Giving students an extra avenue to practice their literacy skills while also building community are important factors in lifelong learning. 

Some ideas I learned from reading my peers' blogs were flexible seating, classroom management, and parental involvement. In regards to flexible seating, this blog taught me the benefits of allowing students to have a seating chart where students have a different seating arrangement than a traditional classroom, such as rows. The blog told me of the benefits of allowing students who may have ADHD to move around in the classroom, which would allow them to be less disruptive to other students in the class. For classroom management, the blog told me about the importance of relationships with students. The blog really pushed the importance of having strong relationships with students as key to how students can learn. It also told me about the token economy they experienced in their own high school. Lastly, the parental involvement blog told me about how parents can be involved in their students' success besides contact with a teacher. This blog told me about how having a supportive parent within the school can help student learning, especially when they were part of the PTA meetings and were able to share their opinions. 

Even though my experience with blogging have been short, I have enjoyed using them. I think they bring a lot of benefits if properly utilized in the classroom. I think they have a good spot in community building. Blogs allow me to let students know about class content or class in general and allow my students to respond to me or to other students. The challenges with using blogging can be difficult to overcome, such as having my students use it for more than just information sharing and actually building a community. For me to overcome those challenges, I must be willing to track data and collaborate with my school community to find the best option to implement them into my classroom. 

Class Size and How it can Affect Students

Students in a small
 group with their teacher

Students have been shown to be better off when placed in smaller classes rather than big classes. Students in larger classes have been shown to be less successful as students who were taught in smaller classes. Evidence suggests that increasing class size harms short-term test scores and their long-term goals in the future. Allowing students to work in smaller class sizes allows them to: engage at a higher level, increases time on tasks, and allows teachers to work with their students rather than manage the classroom. Research suggests a reduction from 22 students to 15 students in the classroom as the ideal amount. When comparing 2010 to 2008 classroom sizes, class sizes have begun to increase. The recession forced some states to abandon their classroom-size policies and make larger classes. These classroom size increases also allow schools and governments to not spend as much on teachers and resources. Class-size reduction benefits minority groups and if increased would harm minority groups the most as well. All in all, smaller class room size would greatly increase student success while costing more, but larger classroom size would sacrifice student success for cheaper costs.

Classroom size, in my experience, has always stayed rather constant. Throughout my public school years, my classes have always hovered around the 25-30 student range. However, I was not the greatest student so I cannot say whether that affected my ability to learn. But, I have noticed that some of my teachers were spending large amounts of class time to manage the class. I also noticed that some of my teachers were on edge more often, I am unable to tell whether the class size was a factor but it was something noticeable while I was a student. In college, however, I noticed a greater emphasis on the importance of smaller classroom size. When I was taking my general education courses, I found that learning with an entire lecture hall limited the ability to ask questions and meaningful one on one time with my instructor. As I began taking more specialized classes, I realized that I could learn and do much better in class when in a room of maybe 15 other students. It allowed me to ask more questions and engage with my peers. I agree with the article in the previous paragraph because it aligned with what I experienced in college.

Family Factors/Home Environment and if it affects the classroom

I have found in an article recently that

A child spending time with their parents

home environment and family factors could possibly affect student learning motivation. There have been studies that have found that gender, socioeconomic factors, and parental status played a role in the motivation of children. Depending on the factors available to the student, in regards to quality and how much they may receive, children can be greatly influenced by what they are given. This article focused on four general characteristics of home environments including developmental stimuli, construct of responsivity, opportunities for various experiences related to spare time being spent outside of the home, and arrangement of daily routine children follow at home. These factors play a large role into motivation of learning for children. Developmental stimuli would increase motivation if there were play tools and shared learning occurred between the parent and child. Construct of responsivity also helps if a parent is able to respond quickly and thoughtfully to their child. Opportunities for experiences outside of the home allows children to learn outside of their daily routines and without a structured construct. The daily arrangement allowed researchers to see how well children followed their routines and to what degree they were successful. These factors helped researchers predict children's mastery motivation within the home. They still do not have the research to conclude whether this can translate into the classroom, but based off the research, they do know that children can have stronger mastery motivation if these factors are present.

In my personal experience with family factors and home environmental factors, I think I am very deficient in this area as well. I do not remember being able to spend time with my family in regards to these family factors. I actually experienced an almost opposite effect. Instead of having stronger master motivation as a child, I experienced it late into my college career. I do believe my case is different, I did not have the chance to spend most of my time with my parents as a child and so my early childhood school years were filled with time spent not focusing in school. Only when I began to piece the importance of doing well in school did I bother spending time to increase my grades. 

How Poverty Affects Children in the Classroom

According to a study by Jensen (2013), students who may be in poverty are less likely to engage in the classroom compared to their middle-class peers. The study results show Impoverished students tend to suffer from a lack of health and nutrition, smaller vocabulary, less effort, less hope and growth mind-set, lower cognition skills, unhealthy relationships, and constant distress. Impoverished people tend to receive less medical attention and healthy habits. Impoverished students also tend to experience a smaller pool of vocabulary when compared to middle and upper-class peers. Students who suffer from low effort in the classroom are seen to exhibit depressive symptoms, which is noted to correlate with an impoverished status. Jensen also found that students who also have a future mindset not focused on hope and growth are also related with lower socioeconomic status. Lower socioeconomic status is also related to lower cognition skills in students. Students who are reinforced with poor relationship skills in the home may bring them over into the classroom, another relation to lower socioeconomic status. Stress is the last factor noted in the article, and it tends to be more constant in students who live in a lower socioeconomic status. 

A distracted student attempting to study

As for my personal beliefs about the impact of poverty within the classroom, I agree that poverty has a large impact in the classroom. I personally experienced some of these effects while I was a student. I had spent most of my early childhood living in homes that were overcrowded and without much money. As a child, I would rarely communicate in class and was so afraid to engage with the curriculum. I realize now that I also shared a lot of factors within this list, such as not having a healthy diet. I would rarely ever eat breakfast and would stay at a low weight for most of my life. I also put forward little to no effort anywhere in the classroom. I never learned to appreciate education and make the most of my time in school, my parents would work long hours and I wouldn't be able to spend much quality time with them. I think a lower cognitive ability and the lack of a wide vocabulary were combined into one during my childhood. I would rarely get the chance to speak English in my home, as my family mostly spoke Korean, which made it difficult to get the opportunities to hear new words. The only way to increase my vocabulary was through school and classmates. Only being able to work with a limited set of words placed a limit on my cognitive ability, I believe. I believe that helping impoverished students is a complicated process that needs to be taken care of for the future of students.