I am a special education resource teacher in a career technology school, and I serve students in a variety of classes including Automotive, Architecture, Visual Communications, and PC Systems. Because these content areas are vastly different, I have come up with some ways that blogs could be used effectively in some of these courses.
The automotive instructor and I have been brainstorming ways to use video in his class. We determined that students could develop How-To videos for completing a variety of tasks, including alignments and tire rotations. Keeping with the theme of blogging in the classroom, students could post their videos to a class blog, and “build a body of knowledge,” (November, 2008).
I also thought about how blogs could be utilized in the architecture class. Students are frequently asked to analyze a structure and comment on several areas of its design. To make this task more efficient, the instructor could post the pictures of the structures on a class blog, and students could post their responses. Building upon this idea, students could also be responsible for responding to the ideas of their classmates, which is something they cannot do by simply turning in their own paper and pencil responses in class.
Students are motivated by the use of blogs, which connect them to a global audience (November, 2008). They can serve a variety of purposes in the classroom; taking into consideration grade level and content, there are countless ways to utilize these tools to enhance instruction.
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators.
I love your idea about using the blog to analyze architectures. This will bring out the full benefit of using a blog. Students will be able to learn from you as well as each other.
ReplyDeleteYou have mention that blogs connect students to a global audience. It would be great if architects from the field would participate in the blog, so that students can have an even larger resource for their study and future.
I believe that often it is a challenge to get the audience outside of class to participate in a class centered blog. Do you have a way that you can attract outsiders?
Hi Megan. Your ideas about the how-to videos and the architecture discussions are interesting. I am curious if you are already in the process of creating the videos. The only difficulty I see is that it could take some time to teach the students to shoot and edit the footage and then have a blog discussion about it. There are a lot of extra steps in there if you want to see if the kids can change a tire or something. Of course, it would be awesome if they could get the tech skills and the automotive skills in one class! It may be interesting to see if the automotive class and the PC systems class (or another technology class) could partner up, with the first group demonstrating the automotive skill and the second filming, editing, and posting the video. Then, students from both classes could respond, but they would have a different focus.
ReplyDelete