Use a Class Blog for Sharing, Writing and Comments, Collaborating, and Creating Community

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Activity Description

Every piece of writing is written for a specific audience. Use a blog (an online site that publishes articles in time sequence, newest on top) to publish your students' writing to the world.

Preparation

1. There are many ways to use a blog for instruction. This article on OTAN gives you links to lots of different examples, and then step by step instructions for creating a blog. Read the article, decide on your writing assignment and goal, and then create a blog (or blogs) to meet your needs.
2. If your students will be assigned to have their own blogs, they will most likely need an e-mail account and an account on whatever blog site you decide on. (The one used in the article is Blogger, but there are others such as Edublogs  or Weebly   

How-To

1. Read the article, and think about how you want to use a blog with your students. Do you want to have them post their writing as comments in response to your blog posts? Do you want them to each have their own blog? You have to answer these questions before you begin.
2. Follow the step by step instructions at the end of the article to create your own blog.
3. Introduce your students to your blog, and proceed from there.

Teacher Tips

• Once you start a blog, you need to post at least once a week, so consider that before you start. Will you have time to keep it up? Or are you using it for one specific assignment that will be over at a specific time? You will see from the examples in the article that many blogs have been used for a year or a semester and then dropped.

Program Areas

• ABE: Adult Basic Education

Levels

• All Levels

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