Sciencephiles Blog Page
Link to Sciencephiles Blog! (however please read below before participating or if you want more information).
How it works...
Prior to every school week, starting a week into the new year (2011!) I will post something of interest and related to what we are studying and you will have an opportunity to comment on it and others comments too!, and suggest one of your own.
Example postings:
- Post current event articles and have students share how the article relates to what they have been learning in class.
- Post videos of class experiments and have students discuss what they remember or learned from the experiment.
- Ask students what they know about a topic prior to a lesson to better prepare for instruction.
- Post pictures of scientific phenomenon and have students explain what they are seeing using their prior knowledge.
- Create polls of what students think will happen in an experiment before conducting the actual experiment
- Connect students to people in the scientific field and have the students ask the professionals questions.
- Class newsletter.
- Post examples of good student writing/work done in class.
- Provide links to additional information to assist them in projects and research.
- Encourage discussion on hot topics relevant to students.
- Post pictures from current events to encourage reactions to what's happening in the world.
- Have students comment on what they learned from lessons and class activities.
- Post surveys to obtain class reactions.
- Assign homework by posting questions, vocabulary, etc.
- Encourage a discussion within groups on group projects.
- Post videos of your own teaching or recorded lessons and have them share their suggestions or questions.
- Have a subject-specific expert participate in a blog topic for a day and have students ask questions or respond to comments posted by the expert.
- Connect them to other students from other schools or countries to discuss a related class topic.
Rules & Guidelines of Blogging
It is important to follow the rules of blogging to protect your safety (refer to Student Blogging Contract). You comments are filtered, and you must sign up with and therefore you are not anonymous to the person who manages the site, so please make suitable comments as you would in person in front of your teachers and peers.
Student blogger's contracts must be signed by students and/or parents prior to using a blog so that specific guidelines are clear and students are aware of the consequences that are involved with inappropriate use of the class blog would be similar to misbehaving at school.
For Parents & Educators (garnered from an awesome teacher):
The pedagogical potential of blogs in education is numerous and facilitates the development of Twenty-first Century Skills. Blogs are like learning journals, except that they are online and shared with a wider audience. Blogs are also a pedagogically supportive tool in that they allow students to be writers and reviewers at the same time, to give and receive immediate feedback from their teachers and peers, to ask questions and receive answers from a larger group of readers, to be exposed to a diverse number of perspectives, and to keep track of their own learning. When students have record of their own learning, they become more aware of the knowledge they are incorporating within their existing knowledge.
The popularity of blogs took off in the late 1990s and continued to dramatically increase in the 2000s. Since their emergence there have been 12 million Americans who maintain blogs and 57 million who read them. Blogs are even more popular with younger individuals between the ages of 13-19, who create 51.5% of blogs. Blogs have become the latest way of reporting and publishing news.
Here are some links that teach students about internet safety:
- Surfing the Net with Kids
- Computer Safety for Kids
- Cyber Safety in the Classroom
- Cyberethics for Kids
- Ms. Frizzle's Classroom Rules- an example of another teacher's blog explaining the rules of blogging.
