As my plate overflows professionally and socially, I instantly and constantly think of three priorities in my academic life right now: this class, my project/independent study, and my job teaching a new curriculum. The curriculum I am working with is dry and contains no technology. As my students cry to me about the boring strategies we must utilize, I went on the web looking for an aide to utilize to make me “me” and not a robot. While searching TeacherTube, I came across a video regarding book blogging. I have never heard of the term, so I watched the video. After watching the video, I was intrigued to share it through this post. To coincide with the video, I looked for an article. Even though the article and video do not match up completely, I combined to think of useful ways to utilize blogs in a classroom (particularly Language Arts).
Site for the video: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=e9aaf1ec9563bbac4058
Site for the article: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/teacher_feature/teacher_feature148.shtml
The video addresses an activity, book blogging. On the video, the teacher says it can be in place of book logs, but I think there are many different ways in could be utilized in the content area. The video explains that each student would sign onto the school’s Blackboard and create a blog regarding a book that they read. Each blog must contain a picture, a background on the book (which is directed towards the student’s explanation of why and when it was chosen), a synopsis on the book, and a verdict (example: five out of five stars). It seems as the teacher utilizes this to ensure that student’s are reading outside of class. Unfortunately, I do not know how productive this activity may be for outside of my classroom. Truth is, the students could do the reading outside of the classroom. However, the book blogging would have to be done in my classroom because a lot of my students do not have the opportunity to access the Internet outside of school. On top of using book blogging for students to demonstrate outside reading, book blogging can be utilized to get the students interested in other pieces or introduce texts. They can be taken further and set up by the teacher to allow the students to participate in background knowledge activities.
Another way I felt book blogging would be effective is to utilize for online book clubs. In Cara Bafile’s article “Starring Jamie Boston,” Bafile discusses book clubs on a few different levels. From the article, I realized that Boston’s issue as a librarian was she wanted to have more people interact with the students and their book club, such as parents and staff. However, the evening meetings were not working. Therefore, book blogging can take book clubs to the next step by incorporating cyber space. Through book blogging, the discussion can be on-going and give many more people an opportunity to participate. The only issue that needed to be conquered was privacy issues. Once that is underway, book blogging can open the doors and invite more learners into the mysterious world of reading.
