Blogging in Book Clubs

Third quarter is winding down, leaving only 8 more weeks of lessons to plan and assessments to grade. As the light of the Spring Break tunnel looms, I am feeling weary. Weary of the pace, weary of new professional learning, weary of piles of grading, weary of classroom management issues that just won't go away no matter how many tricks I pull out of my bag. And yet I am about to jump into another new technology activity, still working on my Framework for Growth professional goal of enhancing instruction through the use of technology: student blogs. Fool that I am...

Next week, my teaching partner, the technology integration specialist, and I will sit down and hammer out how this new tech project will work. We are going to use student blogs during our nonfiction reading unit as a replacement for some of the Reading Notebook work, and possibly for some of the Book Club discussion sessions as well. We'll see.

I can see the benefits of having a forum for publicly thinking "out loud" about reading. I can see the benefits of reading others' thoughts as a way to build on, challenge, or change our own thinking. I can see the benefits of having a way to bring in links to videos and articles that enrich the schema behind the issues within the nonfiction books they are reading. I can see the benefits of equalizing the air time between all members of the class, so that the overbearing have the same amount of space as the meek.

On the other hand, I also see the continued benefit of face-to-face discussions. There is still an art to expressing your views orally so that others understand your meaning, moderating vocal tone and volume to make a point, and reading others' nonverbal messages to understand what they are really trying to say. I don't want to lose that by introducing a tech-based discussion forum.

My hope is that we can balance the two, have the best of both worlds. That by having both blogs and discussion groups, learning will be enhanced, communication skills will be enhanced, and 21st century skills will be enhanced.

So I'm revving myself up for this new thing, getting excited so the students will see it as an exciting idea. I guess I am a glutton for learning myself, never content to just do things the way we did them last year! So class blogs, here we come! Woo Hoo!