Learning Digitally

I realized after reading my posting that I forgot to remind you to get your students blogging along with you. Why? What are the benefits to the students? Tim Stahmer in his blog Assorted Stuff provides a long list of how blogging helps to improve student communication and interaction with the classmates and peers. Also check out MHetherington.net posting on his blog for why he started to use blogging with his 6th grade students. While your there check out his Room 613 Student Blogs Rules for Blogging. What an amazing and purposeful way to introduce to pre-teens the ethics of living, writing, and participating in a Web 2.0 world.

In his list of reasons Tim refers to our students as “digital natives”. If you haven’t read Mark Prensky’s article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” I really encourage you to read it soon; the article is incredibly relevant to teaching students who are constantly surrounded by technology. Prensky points out that the students who come into our classrooms “speak” a different technology language than we do as their teachers. Our students, Prensky points out, have grown up with technology all around them, and come into their classrooms as “native speakers” of a “digital language”. Unfortunately, many classrooms are struggling to translate their “digital language” into learning experiences that are naturally fit into their digital world. So, I come back to blogging with your classes.

If you’re not quite sure that you are ready to blog with audiences outside of your school, try forming a blogging partnership with another teacher in your grade level. Once comfortable go onto David Warlick’s ClassBlogmeister site to find a teacher in your state and grade level who is already blogging and ask if they would like to partner with you. From there, who knows, maybe next its the world!