Using Blogs to Meet Learning Standards

I believe that something very important to the education world is the concept of teacher sharing. I consider myself to be a creative individual and I can come up with a lot on my own for the classroom. However, each person has a specific viewpoint and set of values that allows them to create unique materials, manage their classroom, and more. All schools meet certain set objectives, but they do it in a different way. I believe that I can create great materials, effectively manage student behavior, and structure my classroom in ways that work for me, but I also believe that other people may do all of the above better. Teacher sharing enables educators to find and borrow the best ideas out there or see other practices that allow them to reflect upon and change their own. The value of seeing how someone else does it is clearly well understood, considering the importance of teacher observation in any good education program. I believe that running an accessible blog and accessing others is an excellent way in which I can share my experiences to assist other educators and read about others' experiences in a way to improve my own methods.

I have read a lot about the value of dialogue journals in articles similar to that of Joy Craft Peyton and I have wondered about how to best implement it in a classroom in a way that would be engaging for all. I have always liked the idea of classroom blogs but I struggled with ways in which I could implement them. However, I realize now that it might be effective for me as a teacher to digitize dialogue journals via blogging to make the process a bit smoother and more modern. I think that digital dialogue journals would allow students access to corrective software which would allow instant reflection throughout the writing process and that it would make dialogue journals a little easier. Regardless of their language backgrounds, most children frequently use and identify with web technology. I believe that in this way, blogging could make dialogue journals more interesting to students and it would allow back-and-forth comments to be easily created and archived. I think that "commenting" on a digital thread seems more natural than writing in a journal, turning it in, and waiting for it to come back with more comments. Blogs may increase the ease of teacher-student interaction and assist students with unarguably valuable reflection.

Some standards in my field that could be met by blogging are listed below:

Standard 3 (Grades 9-12)
Students will listen, speak, read, and write in English for critical analysis and evaluation.
Students can post reflective posts on topics in order to better analyze their own thinking and opinion.

Standard 4 (Grades 9-12)
Students will listen, speak, read, and write in English for classroom and social interaction.
Students can comment on each others' blogs in order to give feedback and further discuss recommended topics.