Hello again!
This entry marks my fifth blog post thus far in my EDT 370 project, and I am proud to say that I feel like I am improving as a blogger, especially after looking at other educators' social media pages. After exploring all the different writing styles and topics of the blogs floating around the internet, I feel like I am better able to understand how blogs can be helpful in the classroom. Particularly, I enjoyed the conversational tone 95% of the blogs and social media pages I viewed possessed. I liked the relaxed way of receiving and sharing information, which is how I would want to use blogs in my classroom as well.
When I think back to my K-12 school experience, most of my academic conversations that required me to share information with others revolved around books my peers and I read together as a class or in reading groups, which is how I would use blogs in my classroom; I would like to implement reading circle blogs with my students. Blogs, I believe, would add tremendously to the book discussions by solving several major problems I experienced when participating in literature circles. The biggest issue I think plagues face-to-face literature circles has to do with student accountability. If students are simply expected to chat in small groups about what they read, some students will not speak. However, by requiring students to participate in reading circle blogs, teachers will be able to check that all students are responding to the reading. Additionally, I feel like online responses may relieve some anxiety students, myself included, feel when they are asked to discuss literature. Many students, particularly children in special education, worry that they may sound unintelligent or too intelligent when talking face-to-face with peers. Blog responses help alleviate some of this stress. Students, since they are able to type their responses and post at their leisure, have more think/wait time to collect their ideas, are able to practice what they want to say, and can edit their posts if they start to ruminate over what they said. Students who have short term memory problems may also use the blog's archive to review what they and other students said previously to help them comprehend the novel with greater ease. Overall, this will encourage students to be more engaged with their literature circle. Finally, I think literature circle blogs will help minimize the gap between high-achieving and low-achieving or culturally diverse students' background knowledge. For example, if a student connects the story that the literature circle is reading to something in his or her life that the other group members know little about, the first student can post pictures, links, and videos to help educate his or her peers. This enables the students to teach each other new things and encourages students to ask for more information. Literature circle blogs, I believe, are a more efficient way to discuss books among older students because they more easily hold students accountable for their learning, alleviate anxiety, and help close the background knowledge gap among students than traditional, face-to-face blogs.
