Educational Blogging

I am starting a little experiment this week with some of my classes. As a new blogger myself - I have been thinking about the different ways that blogging could be used by different students to help them in their studies. I have come up with 2 ideas that i hope will help some of my students not just to develop their ICT and blogging skills, but hope that they will also add real benefit to the particular courses that they are studying.

The first is for my Year 14 A level geography class. I have created a team blog that will allow all my students to take part in an online discussion about what they have been learning. This is a reflective activity and should allow the students the opportunity to think about what they have learnt, how they have learnt it and to share their ideas with other students in the class.

The second is for my Year 14 Travel and Tourism class. They have to complete a group/team project where they have to organise and book a real holiday trip for students in the school. I am organising them into a phoney travel company called Slemgo Travel Corp. and they all have to take a particular role in the company and help to develop the holiday and sell it and manage it for the rest of their peers. This is not an easy activity to do and hopefully the blog area will allow a share space for ideas and input that the kids in the class can control.

The big question is - can blogging really be used by these young people to help them to learn more . . . .