Educational Blogging

Educational blogging is very important within the classroom. Educational blogging is the opportunity for students to voice their ideas and opinions with others using technology. It also increases communication and conversation skills as learners comment on others' blogs or replies to their own feedback. According to NOVA, "Blogging develops students' analytical thinking and increases learning to a higher level, not just merely "understanding" and "remembering" instructional materials." There are many benefits of educational blogs for students. Blogging promotes self-expression, analytical thinking, exercises students' creativity, improves students' writing skills, and encourages the sharing of resources between peers. 

While looking over my peer's blogs, the topic of standardized testing really stood out to me. Standardized testing has been a 'hot topic' spanning across education for the past several years. Throughout this blog, I learned about the time crunch that standardized testing creates. While I realize standardized testing is required, it often makes the teacher choose which information will be covered. Are children really learning the material? Or, is it a new lesson every day to cover what is going to be tested? Teachers and students must decide what information is necessary to be learned, while other information is completely memorized for the test. Another thing I learned from this blog is the negative effect standardized tests have on students' mental health. Many children have immense test anxiety or fear of taking standardized tests. Others are terrified of the score they receive compared to peers which lowers their self-esteem and can cause children to have a negative ideology of school. Finally, within this blog, I learned about the directness of standardized testing. This type of testing does not allow for children to show their thought process of why they thought that was the correct answer as they have been taught since they started school. Standardized testing makes children believe that there is one straightforward answer and does not account for why or how they get that correct answer. Other factors should be acknowledged within standardized testing rather than choosing and bubbling one answer.

Three girls working on creating their 
online blog through laptops.

Besides, the blogs learned within this course, I have not had much experience blogging. While I love to read blogs and interact with others, I had never created one of my own. I have really enjoyed this experience of learning how to create, format and add content to a blog. I plan on using this type of educational blogging within my classroom as it is an update of what is going on and allow for students and guardians to use as a resource. I also will add activities within the classroom that allow children to create their own blogs. This will take time setting up and formatting, however, I believe the children within my classroom will benefit from learning how to blog and it will serve as a differentiated classroom activity.