53301_Briscoe_lesson1_Blog1

Tacy Briscoe

REOL 533_01

Blog Assignment Week 1

3/11/10

• What did you learn this week that you will use immediately in your classroom?

A major idea that seems very useful to me was to create a webpage and blog for my students.  We can create the page together at the beginning of the year.  The students will know where to look for assignments, paper due, homework, etc..  I am a substitute teacher and would love it if the teacher had actually left me a blog page to look on for instructions.  That way they would not even have to leave the comfort of home if they were sick.  What a novel idea. 

I also like the idea of the students having a protected, supervised blog page.  I know personally my niece is not allowed to blog because it is so unsupervised.  This would allow students to be technologically advanced and in a professional manner. 

• What steps will you take to implement this in your classroom?

I will write  a lesson plan for students to produce their own blog page and submit “journal” pages every week.  Long gone are the days of composition books and think of how much easier grading could be for the teacher.  Much less paper to bring home as well. 

• What challenge(s) will you face when using this in your classroom?

I think the learning curve is always difficult for everyone.  This is like the learning curve for Angel Learning and how every professor has a different way of conforming to the Angel Learning webpage.  As a student it can be frustrating to submit homework one way and have class discussion a certain way and by the time you figure it all out, class is over and you have a whole new professor with different ways!  That said, I realize this is all teaching us different ways to produce the same outcome and hope to have this for my students.

• What will you do to overcome the challenge(s)?

I would like to think I could effectively teach and layout the directions for a blog.  Also, we would initially make me, the teacher, a blog page and they would get to see how we developed that page.  Students really benefit from a step-by-step guide and I would include this in my lesson plan.  The time it takes to make it will be time saved later in writing assignments, grading, etc. for both the students and the teacher.