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.