Using Computers in Education

I think that it would be very beneficial for students to relate blogs to literature. I think that when reading a novel students could be asked to keep a blog as one of the main characters. They could make a blog posting after reading each chapter and include their feelings about situations in the book, what they think they will do to resolve problems, what they think will happen to themselves and other characters, etc. Keeping a journal about this will require students to really reflect on what they have read in the book and I think that keeping an online journal would give them incentive to do a good job because their work could be viewed by others.

Well I finally got in! This community blogging is a cool idea, it is kind of like our "Web CT Discussion" yet a little more personal. There is one way that can think of right off the top of my head for a highschool health class. In my preinterniship I taught "sex ed" and had a question jar for the students to put in any questions that they wanted to. It was confidential and it saved the students from feeling embarassed in front of their peers. i could use blogging to post the questions annonymously as well as my feelings/answers instead of the jar which would save time in class, and the students could log into this as frequently as they wanted to. The students would also be encouraged to add in any additional information that they could to better answer the questions, and aske more questions if they were comfortable with blogging them.

I have really enjoyed blogging during the course of this semester. It has been a great place to store good websites that come along. I found this helpful because many times I forget to write good websites down, and "Favorites" don't follow me around. Blogger can be accessed from all computers, so these websites are there whenever I need them. I would use this in the classroom. In early childhood we rely alot on journals, and blogging is an online journal. I think that any age students could do this. With younger students you would have to take them a few examples, until they got the processes. It would be fun to use blogging in Thematic Units. Every time we switch a thematic unit (over the course of the year) students could switch topics, or become a new "character". An example of this would be in an "Under the Sea" unit students could write from the perspective of a fish. In a "Dinosaur" unit students could become a dinosuar. Also having the students blog good websites would be benefitial, just like it was for us. So in summary, I enjoyed blogging and I would definatly use this in my classroom.

I am starting a teaching job as of the 19th of April here and I was out at the school today. I am teaching an Info Pro 20 class (which kind of has me scared because I am not totally sure what I am doing!). The current teacher told me that some of the students seem to enjoy "chatting" on the internet instead of doing their actual given assignment. After tonight I am thinking that blogging may be something I need to incorporate into that classroom. If the students know that they will have time to do a classroom blog at the end of everyclass, and it can be a class they can ask each other questions it may eleviate some of their "want" to chat on MSN, etc. I am hoping that this will work, I will have to see what the lab is like and if it is possible for me to actually do it in the classroom. I will have a lot of learning to do to get through this class, but I am hoping that I will be able to make it through. I am sure that the students will know more than me and all will be well, but this blogging thing is looking like it might be useful. It will be a good way for the students to ask me questions too through that since we won't see each other everyday and they may need help in between time. I will definitely have to check it all out! I do think that blogging is something I will try and introduce in my other classes too. Life Transitions, Health and such it would be really good for discussions, especially for the students who find it hard to talk in class, or it takes long to articulate an answer. Hmm... the ideas are just floating in my head now!

Blogging is a great way to get students involved in many different kinds of activities in the classroom. They are fun and I think they make tasks such as journaling and responding to questions more appealing because students get to go onto the computer and THAT IS COOL!! For my web quest, blogging was a great way to get students doing a daily journal reporting some of the components they needed to research and reflect on. Without blogging I am not sure what I would have had them do instead. I guess I would have had them do a written journal, but being on the computer already for the web quest and being able to post in a place where it is easy for others to view as well as for the teacher to access, seems to make more sense. The possibilities are really endless with how you could use blogger in your classroom.
As a teacher, blogger is also really useful. I like being able to record favorite websites quickly and write a quick note about what they contain. By bookmarking websites in Netscape Composer, you can't write descriptions about what they are about, so I like blogger for this. As well, I like that you can go to any computer, anywhere and have your sites avaliable. Bookmarks only work on your computer and cannot be viewed anywhere. As a teacher, you could blogg sites for students to check out and this would be a quick and efficient way for them all to get the information.
These are a few ideas for how to use bloggs. I really like blogging and have come to appreciate all hte possibiliites the web site can offer!

I think blogging works pretty well. I am not a very detailed person so find it hard at times to put my thoughts on the web for everyone to see. I would use this with my kids but I am not sure of the purpose I would have them use. More thought would need to be put into this.

I sure hope this works.

LearningElectric.com provides tutorials in the form of QuickTime movies on a number of applications including MS Office, KidPix and HTML.