There are a number of ways blogs can be used in the classroom. The first is the very popular idea of posting your assignments, weekly updates and homework help on the blog. I feel it could be a really good way to keep in touch with parents. Give the parents a link and they can see what is going on in the classroom on a weekly or daily basis, depending on how often the teacher posts.
Another way that is unique to science classrooms would be to use it for science journals. Scientific notebooks are very similar to blogging in the sense that have various entries, they are date stamped, you are writing to a certain audience, and that they have to make sense to someone outside of your "lab". Blogging offers a frame that students can work within, it in a sense models how a student would keep a journal in the lab, while allowing for continued feedback from the teacher, as well as their peers. Unlike a google doc where it can be one continuous entry, blogs more closely emulate what research is like, stop and go, entry here, entry there,not a continuous documents. These entries allow more for reflection as a research journal would. Ending the posts with a conclusion, cluing in the reader what should be occurring over the next post.
As we chatted after class, blogging about labs is a great way to engage learners in the lab process. Science labs are often predictable and cookbook in nature.
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