Blogging in Education Today, part 3 (Student Blogging)

Continuing our multi-part series on the use of blogs in education today, we look at various examples of Student blogging efforts.

Over the last two weeks we've looked at various ways in which today's teachers are using blogs. This week we continue our review of the educational blogoshpere by looking at different ways in which students are using blogs in education-oriented applications.      

There are various reasons why students blog in an educational context. Some examples include blogging as part of a classroom effort involving other students, blogging on their own simply because they enjoy it, and blogging as part of a “sharing the experience” blog on a college web site.

As with the last two week's posts, I believe that one of the best ways to provide insight into these types of blogs is to take a look at a handful of ‘live' examples. 

Student Blogging Examples   

Portable Radio - This is a great student blogging effort focused around podcasting. The students working on this blog change from year to year. The last academic year's work leveraged the efforts of 56 5th grade students, from two different elementray schools in Ottawa, Canada. I applaud the educators behind this ongoing effort – Mrs. Smith of South March Public School and Mr. Toft of A. Lorne Cassidy Elementary School.      

 

Jazzing Up Eight Grade - Eighth grader Abbey blogs about “School, Piano, and Everything In Between”. Abbey loves reading mystery novels, playing piano, she loves math (“I love the perfect, you’re either right or wrong, way math is.” – me too!) and much more. I love her blog.  

     

 Jess – “Hello, I’m Jess. I am 14 and live in Australia, Tasmania. I Like school, as weird as that may sound. Right now my favourite subjects are English and science..” Jess blogged here regularly in 2009 as “a school thing”, but hasn't kept up with it since then. When she was blogging regularly, this was a nice example of a student expressing herself and sharing and learning through this medium.

CW Blog - Here we have an example of student's blogging about their college experiences. Deirdre Aldana and Michael Adebiyi share their thoughts and observations as they work their way through life as students at The College of Westchester in White Plains, NY. These types of student blogs are widely used by colleges and universities and even some K-12 institutions, as a way to provide potential students some perspective they can easily relate to.
  

So there we have 4 great examples of different ways in which today's students are using blogs to express themselves, share their experiences, and develop their writing skills.  

Next
Next week we move on to Administrator's blogs. College and university presidents, school principles, and other administrators, have been using blogs for years to convey information about their institutions, and to share their thoughts about various aspects of today's educational landscape. We'll review a handful of worthy examples of this type of education related blogging in this next part in our series – please stop back and join us!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Blogging In Education Today (a multipart series)
Blogging in Education Today (part 2 in a series)