Blogs

Writing about blogs on a blog, mmm, interesting.

This week I watched a really interesting thing on Teachers TV about using blogs in the classroom. (by accident should I say before you think that I am a swot!, I was flicking through sky on my only day off as the rain poured down and prevented my shopping trip!)

But it did turn out to very interesting. The teacher was using it with a year six class to create a web based magazine. She said that it was very easy and described the steps to go about it safely. Making it password protected, so that nobody without a password can access the blog. She also briefly said that it is possible to put it on the internal network, so that there could be free access to it internally (however, she did not say too much about how this was achieved, but its good to know that it is possible.) The teacher then showed how the class would use a word processing package to initially create their documents and then cut and paste them into the blog when they have been agreed.

This allowed the children to be really involved in their learning. Different children were given different roles, editor, sports reporter, entertainment reporter, deputy editor etc. It was cross curricular as it could involve most subjects and was a long term project that was allocated class time and homework time every week.

I feel that it is a fantastic tool to get KS2 children involved in their learning. It may be a bit tricky at first to get all the security and technology bits together and organized. But once this has been achieved then it should be a fantastic long term project for children of all abilities.

Clare