Using Blogs in the Classroom

With the internet, and particularly collaborating over the internet, becomes a vital part of most new jobs being created in the 21st century, it is vital for a Social Studies teacher to facilitate the ability to use the internet in collaborative and interactive way.  The objective of this entry is to outline one way to use blogs in a Social Studies classroom, using a recent entry from New York Times blogger Nate Silver.

In a recent post, Silver makes an argument about the ability of Republicans to compromise due to the nature very conservative nature of the large freshman class in the House of Representatives.  I propose using this post as a homework assignment during a unit on Congress/legislative voting decisions.  Students would be required to respond in the "Comments" section to the argument proposed by Silver.  This post would be analyzed in class during Guided and Independent practice, breaking down the argument and allowing students to gather their thoughts.

For homework the first night, students would be required to develop a paragraph response to post on FiveThirtyEight.com strictly in response to Silver's article.  Then, for a second night of homework students would have to respond to one of their fellow students, or another commenter on the blog.

Using the post in this way has a number of pedagogical advantages.  First, it helps to move towards a "Constructivist" model in the classroom, where students create their own learning by picking the part of the article they want to focus on and develop. In addition, this is consistent with the idea of "collaborative" learning, because students must read the posts of other students and respond to them.  While getting collaboration in the classroom can sometimes be difficult, particularly for shy students, allowing students to engage with each other in an online community can be an excellent alternative.