Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Blogging is beneficial for supporting student reflection.

Personally I feel that blogging is a good way for students to 'pen' down their thoughts and feelings as students are more comfortable with online technology and info-comm tools. Having said that, teachers should also ensure that students follow a guideline for posting their reflections. With these guidelines in place, students' reflections would be more structured and it would be easier for the reader to follow the train of thought.

Guidelines that students should follow are :-
  • they should write down briefly what they already know or read
  • they should be able to support any comments or opinions that they make with relevant quotes/instances from either their readings or their past experiences. students can also post these articles or websites on their blogs so that the readers can follow up on their own
  • students should also read any comments or questions that may have been written with regards to their reflections and continue to learn gain a more in depth understanding of the topic that they are reflecting. Comments help to maybe highlight a certain aspect of the issue that was not thought about.
If students can follow these guidelines and conduct their thinking in a formal and responsible way, both the readers and the author of the blog would benefit greatly from the postings.
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5 comments:

  1. SujuanMarch 13, 2009 at 9:49 AM

    I agree to a certain extent that setting guidelines help structure students' reflections. Just an opinion, would guidelines stifle students' creativity?

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  2. derekMarch 18, 2009 at 11:28 AM

    I like the guidelines. I think they are relevant, practical and enforceable, yet do not restrict the students too much in their exploration.

    Re: Sujuan's comments:
    I don't think guidelines (especially those above) stifle creativity if they remain as just that -- guidelines. It is only when students want to do the same thing but in a different way, and can't because they are prevented from doing so by certain 'guidelines' (effectively 'rules'), that creativity is stifled.

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  3. David TayMarch 18, 2009 at 6:48 PM

    I also feel that setting guidelines may stifle students' creativity when doing reflections.

    Blogging enables students to post reflections in many different methods like videos, illustrations and many of these have very organic forms. So if the guidelines are conceptual and higher level, it should be okay. But it should not be too specific.

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  4. ZackMarch 18, 2009 at 7:49 PM

    Guide lines should be different for each class. And i do feel that the guidelines or rules should not be too specific. Teachers should be able to monitor the blogs to provide the feedback and set new guidelines if needed.

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  5. Charles GoxavierMarch 20, 2009 at 9:09 AM

    Probably the guidelines should be centred around the type of content one is allowed to post. For example, non-academic or offensive/vulgar posts are forbidden. Guidelines should also consider cyberwellness issues.

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