Journal 4

"Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog" by Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

I thought that this was a great article and did a great job of introducing blogs in the classroom. Kids today really do know A LOT about computers and do an amazingly good job at understanding computer use. So many children today more or less live on the computer, why not create a class blog? Not only will kids be completing an assignment for a grade, but they will be working on their typing skills, they will be creating a sense of community with their classmates and teachers, and also having a finished product at the end. Class blogs would be a great project for students to work on and show to their parents at open house at the end of the school year. There is of course the issue of safety to our students. This is a very real topic today, but with the use of a protected blag space, it can be avoided. There is a huge responsibility of teachers to keep their students safe, so as long as the teacher understands how to protect students online, there is not a real problem.

Questions:
1.) How do you protect your blog spot?
There are services that do just that! Some examples, as stated in the article, are Class BlogMeister or Edublogs.org.

2.)How do you make sure that all kids get an equal chance?
The good thing about a blog is that every child gets an equal opportunity to express his/her opinion. In the classroom, some kids are shy and some are outgoing, but with a blog, all kids are equal.