The use of the words blog and blogging is completely new to me, strangely enough. As I’ve been exploring, I’ve come to realize that I utilize and read MANY different people’s blogs, but didn’t realize, by definition, I was looking at blogs. My understanding of a blog is that generally speaking, it is a webpage constructed and designed for the use of an individual or small group to provide thoughts, opinions, information and, simply put, a space for public sharing – a digital log of ideas.
I believe the main affordances blogs provide are the sharing of individual thoughts, ideas, and opinions, as well as, a forum for the exchange of those ideas. While its design is for the individual to share, there is a communication component where others can comment and ask questions providing opportunities for discussion among many different minds.
Three of the blogs I follow are Simply Kinder, Kinder Tribe, and Little Minds At Work. The common trait among each of these is their focus on primary learning thoughts and tools. As educators we are masters of sharing – it’s virtually a requirement as we all have a common goal, to continually find ways to reach and teach others. Each of the above blogs is rich sources of ideas, information, and resources. They are each organized in ways to find tools and ideas for different subjects, different ages, and/or different abilities. The main affordance these blogs provide is a “one-stop-shop” when seeking information regarding primary teaching practices.
I believe blogs differ from glogs and vlogs in that they are shared websites that combine the use of video, audio, written words, links, and more. Whereas, I understand glogs are more like interactive posters and vlogs are video logs of information and/or ideas – they are pieces that can be integrated into a blog, but not vice versa.
As a teacher of primary children (typically ages 4-6), I can see how I might be able to use a blog as a central place for students to access the different technologies we use at school. This could be an interactive site that would provide structure or organization to the different sites or platforms we use in the classroom, which could then translate into the same use at home by allowing them access to the site. This would provide some augmentation to simply providing parents with a list of sites they could utilize at home.
Possible use of a blog at the primary level could be to provide a space for students to either video or record their voices regarding thoughts on different stories, activities, or a sentence/question stem provided by the teacher. The collaborative process could be modified or even redefined by giving students a space to share their thoughts digitally and creating a permanence to those thoughts that could be shared/discussed by the class as a whole. This would bring the learning objectives into that Evaluation stage allowing students to apply and analyze their answers or even ask questions they may still have.
This idea of using a blog in a primary classroom is a very new thought for me. I will be considering the potential of uses to enhance or even modify certain learning objectives. I’m excited about learning how to create my blog and design it in a way that is meaningful to me. The limitations for allowing students to seek and explore different blogs are, of course, their inability or limited ability to read at this stage. I’ll have to continue seeking blogs that may be of actual use by students at the primary level, but I believe the reasonable use at this stage would be to provide organization or simplification of access to the school curriculum.