5 Ways to Bring Blogging to Your Classroom
This article was also originally published in English in Texas — A Journal of the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts
Link to NCTE Slideshow of the Presentation
Blogging.
What is it? For years I didn’t like the word and didn’t even really understand it. I even had a friend who loved wearing the t-shirt, “YOUR BLOG SUCKS!” It made me laugh because most blogging isn’t something I would consider journalism, academic or a noble pursuit in the classroom. That was until a few years ago when a friend gave a presentation at the national high school journalism convention questioning whether “authentic voices” were being published in high school classes. His answer and when I looked at my class was a loud, “No, they are not.”
Sadly, when I graded or judged from high school essays, newspapers and journalism websites what I found was dry and boring. In contrast to the students who are in high school that are vibrant, funny, witty and full of personality. The proposed solution at the conference was blogging. Individual blogs that would open up a different kind of forum for student writing, videos, photos and podcasts. A place where they could explore a topic of interest, and not follow the more outline based writing assignments that more often than not kills student voice and engagement.
After the conference, I gave blogging in my class a shot. As a result students created blogs like Politikid that explored politics, and OMG Prom that explodes with popularity every spring with stories about everything to do with prom, Nerd Nook for the gamers, and a wide assortment of blogs on sports, photography, cooking, and even a fishing.
The more blogging grew among journalism students, the more I began to think of ways to bring blogging into Language Arts classes. I experimented in a Language Arts 9 class. Below, are five ways I found on how to bring blogging into different classes, different assignments, and my takeaways.
1: Be a Blogger
As a former journalist, I have the curse of loving to write and publish. It pained me sometimes to be helping other publish or write and not publishing my work. Blogging, or writing articles on different websites, eased this itch and became a great classroom resource.
By blogging www.JEADigitalmedia.org, and Medium I created examples of what I was publishing. Many of these ended up being about the work they were doing in class. If I expected them to be publishing their work online I also thought it would be fair to publish my own work. This also included a teacher website, YouTube channel of video how-tos and Storify stories of links off of social media. Other teacher bloggers use sites like Huff Post Teacher and Edu Blogger to publish and get ideas for classroom blogging activities.
2: Pick a Student Blogging Project
Blogging for journalism is easy and works in any Language Arts class. A journalistic student blog is a topic that they are interested in writing about that other reporters are publishing blogs on. The best way to learn about journalistic blogs is through examples. There are professional or “adult” blogs and teen produced blogs.
For professional blogs students read and analyzed ESPN for sports, Rolling Stone for music, Politico for politics, and my personal favorite, Nerd Tears for movie reviews. Nerd Tears is a great example of a well branded blog that oozes voice and interesting opinions on the latest movies and entertainment news.
For teen produced blogs students read We the Urban, Rookie by Tavi (she is famous if you don’t know), Jeremy Cooks (cooking), and Spencer Tweedy (music). To find blogs to read and the new stories on their topics students used Twitter lists, Flipboard or a Google News feed.
My favorite example of a student blog came from a struggle student I will call Tommy. Tommy was disengaged, and struggling through Language Arts 9. Disengaged until he jumped out of his seat one day and asked if he could read and write about FISHING… BASS FISHING! for his blog project.
Tommy searched the internet for the latest fishing trends, analyzed them on a weekly basis and for his “Genius Project” created a video for his blog on fishing around Iowa City. His writing went from remedial to insightful and I might even say academic. His attitude went from poor to outstanding. This also happened for English Language Learners who could search both Spanish and English website for the latest news in futbol or news from their native country. The power of student choice made a difference for those students.
Projects outside the classic journalistic blog that I have not done, but have read about through EduBlogger include science experiments, research projects using Piktochart, art portfolios and general class portfolio blogs. There are thousands of blogging assignments on EduBlogger and it is a great resource.
3: Pick a Platform
The internet is filled with blogging platforms for anyone to publish their work. Below are five options.
Wordpress
- Wordpress is the industry standard for journalistic publishing. Due to this most high school journalism programs use a Wordpress based website. It is easy to use and can be setup at wordpress.com. Wordpress.org is a paid for higher end part of Wordpress. To use the more advanced Wordpress sites that are used by journalistic publications a theme and hosting needs to be purchased.
Google Sites
Most teachers using Google Classroom have their students use Google Sites. It syncs
with Google Docs and has security settings or privacy settings if privacy is a concern.
Medium
- Medium is a clean blogging service designed by the founders of Blogger and Tumblr. It is designed for long form journalism, social media sharing and commenting, and also as a forum to find some of the best writers and journalists on the web.
TUMBLR
Another easy to use blogging platform. Some students and teachers prefer it for its design
options.
BLOGGER
The original and still great blogging website to publish design and update blogs.
KidBlog
This blogging platform is mainly used in elementary and middle schools where security is
is very important. It is a basic blog, but works very well with younger students and links to parent emails for updates.
4: Use Multimedia and Smart Phones
The best way I have found to get students to publish videos, photos, audio recording and multimedia is through their phones. Not every student has a smartphone, but most due. In my class, I have a few iPads students can check out if they don’t have a smartphone for an assignment or they can usually partner up with a student who has a smart phone.
The first step to adding video to website is to have students set up their YouTube channel. If they have a GMail account or if students have a school GMail account they have a YouTube channel. To get started they need to find the YouTube app on a computer and download YouTube Capture. The YouTube app is not designed for uploading and editing video, but the YouTube Capture app does a great job of uploading and doing basic video edits.
Adding photos to a blog can be done through various apps and photo editing apps. My recommended app for editing photos is Snapseed and Instagram.
Piktochart is a great resource for producing infographics and researching topics. There are a number of templates that students can use to put information into graphic form. Last year, one of the stories of the year for the National Scholastic Press Association was a dynamic Piktochart.
Storify is another great resource that is embeddable and can be used to aggregate links or to add a collection of stories, Instagram photos or Tweets onto a blog. Students can search on Storify to find information on the web, while dragging and dropping information onto their Storify when they find a resource they want to use.
5: Publish and Connect
The last step of publishing their content after being workshopped and developed is probably the most rewarding for students. It can also be a great connection to parents. When my son publishes a blog on KidsBlog it makes my day.
Publishing more than anything makes it “real” for students. This is no longer an assignment for the teacher, but for the world. Once it is published on the web it gives students the ability to be republished by local media through programs like IowaPrepSports and even larger fiction writing blogs or education blogs.
Interacting on social media with other writers and sharing stories has provided many of my journalism students with encouragement and feedback from professionals. This also gets them reading a wide variety of authors online that they can know on a personal level. Through blogging they can create and update a Twitter list of writers and publications on their topic. The media has done a good job of publishing the problems surrounding social media, but this interactive side of Twitter allows students to use it in a professional way, while developing their brand. Instead of a student not getting into college because of their social media feed they may get recruited because of what they are publishing online.
TAKEAWAYS
- Student Choice is Important
- Online Blogs can Inspire Students
- Publishing Student Work is Important
- Using New Tech Engages… Let them use their phone
- Repetitive Assignments Can Develop Expertise
- Authentic Student Voice Can Happen in High School
@jon_rogers
