Sarah Hartnett’s Blog
Blogging 1/25/11
After following the blog, Tips, Tools and Technology for Educators by Lauren Grossberg (http://blog.learningtoday.com/), for a week I became better aware of what to write on my blogs. This blog focuses on useful tools teachers can use in their classroom to promote student collaboration. It also shows quick video clips on recent technology, such as Iphone/Ipad applications for children to read comics online. This would be very useful for teaching to student’s interests areas when reading.
The author of the blog, Lauren Grossberg blogs Monday-Friday, keeping her audience up to date on recent technology as well as helpful teacher tips to use in the classroom. On Monday January 24,2011 she posted social media sites for parents to connect online. This would be helpful to share with parents of students, so they too become web 2.0 literate. The assigned readings this focused on using blogging in classrooms to promote collaboration as well as broaden the audience for student writing. Zawilinski (2009) discussed the four common types of blogs that are used at the elementary level as “classroom news blogs, mirror blogs, showcase blogs, and literature response blogs” (Zawilinski 2009, p.652-653). She suggested that HOT blogging, or Higher Order Thinking, provides opportunities for students to question texts and become critical readers and writers.
Johnston’s’ article focused more authors having their own blogs to build a deeper more authentic connection with their audience. Johnston stated that “Blogging is a reciprocal process; it requires reading as much as writing; listening as much as speaking” (Johnston 2010, p. 179). I would agree with this statement because blogging requires students to be critical readers and writers by reading multiple perspectives, as well as having voice in their own writing. As Richardson states, “The potential audience is one of the most important aspects of the Read/Write Web” (Richardson 2010, p.27). Blogging is a tool that has the potential to benefit both teachers’ instruction as well as students’ literacy abilities.
