Journal #4

In the article “Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog,” by Patricia Deubel she gives really good advice for using blogs in the classroom. Deubel gives her point of view on why it is important to blog, “The blog is a vehicle to ensure that everyone is heard and is a valued member of the learning community. As future educators incorporating technology in our curriculum is very important. Blogging can not only teach students to use the new tech resources, but it is also a way to communicate, collaborate, and participate. Deubel gives four basic guidelines on how to successful create a blog and use it for online teaching:
Posting Guidelines-a grading system must be applied in order to get participation.
Provide HTML support-teacher must know and be able to answer questions about the technology being presented.
Teacher participation-give students comment on their posting, and perhaps can lead to a new discussion.
Involve students in summarizing and moderating discussions, assessment and evaluations are crucial to determine discussion effectiveness.
As with all the internet resources one must keep in mind the ethical considerations so it is highly important that the teacher monitors comments and teaches students about the dangers and ethical issues there is when using this tool.

As a teacher will I use blog as an instructional tool?
I think I would use blog as an instructional tool. This will allow students to collaborate and learn more about each other. I would also use this for parent’s participation since many parents work and have not time to get involved.

Should learners define their own blogging rules?
This question was asked by the author, and I think it is very important that students have a good understanding of the ethical issues, so yes; I would allow the students to create their own rules for the blog. After all, it is still consider classroom time and the same rules should apply to the blog just like in the classroom.