Vlogging and Blogging with Students

Amie Adams argued in her blog post 3 Reasons to get your Students Vlogging or Blogging This Year  that:

“Regardless of your age, we’ve probably all written similar essays: personal narratives, persuasive letters, and responses to books of literary merit. So why do writing assignments continue to stay the same when our students’ world has so drastically changed?”

So why are we, as educators, creating writing assignments that continue to stay the same? What do we need to change and adapt in our planning and practice for our twenty first century learners in our classrooms? How can we create writing assignments that are engaging for our students and encourages student voice? 

Choosing to introduce vlogging and blogging with our students, may seem overwhelming at first however, our students may be more comfortable vlogging and blogging then we may be aware of. With the use the social media, many of our students are documenting their daily lives through Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok already. So as educators, I think it is important to try to teach our students how to use different vlogging and blogging platforms to develop their student voice, document their learning and communicate their thinking beyond the four walls of their classroom. 

Through vlogging and blogging students are developing their global competencies. Students are able to share ideas, ask questions, and respond to their peers. Students are able to publish their thinking over time, not just at the end of a unit. Students are able to be more reflective about their learning and pose questions to their peers. Students are learning how to collaborate and communicate with their peers within their classroom and around the globe. They are able to learn the importance of being a digital citizen and how to participate in responsible and safe manner. 

As a junior and intermediate educator, I think having students create their own blogs, through a platform like Blogger or KidBlog, would help students to communicate their thinking and develop their voice. Students can share their blogs with their classmates initially and as they become more confident and learn how communicate more responsibly, they can share their blogs with a wider audience. To introduce blogging, I would have students share their thinking about a class read aloud, a shared reading mentor text, what they are reading independently, or what they are learning in math. Instead of a traditional reading response or math journal, students could add images or videos to communicate their thinking, opinions and ask questions. 
  
Students could also share their learning during a social studies or history inquiry project or during a passion project. I would have students share: their research; questions they are trying to answer and new questions they have as they research; pictures and/or videos; and what they learned during their inquiries and/or passion projects. Together as a class we would create a success criteria, single point rubric, and checklist for students to use to help them develop and organize their new blogs. Sarah La Caze has a an example of a checklist she used with her grade 5 students on pages 22-24 of her article, Changing Classroom Practice through Blogs and Vlogs. I think having students use a checklist like the one Sarah La Caze created, students are able to organize their blogs and try to communicate their thinking more effectively. 

What are your experiences vlogging or blogging with your students? What were your biggest challenges and what were your biggest successes? I would love to hear about your experiences using vlogging or blogging with your students. 

References

Adams, Amie. (2019, October 3). 3 Reasons to get your Students Vlogging or Blogging This Year. Retrieved from: https://www.edtechteam.com/blog/2019/10/3-reasons-to-get-your-students-vlogging-or-blogging-this-year/

La Caze, Sarah. (2017, February). Changing Classroom Practice through Blogs and Vlogs. Retrieved from: https://www.alea.edu.au/documents/item/1471 

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2017) Framework of Global Competencies. Retrieved from: http://ilr-ria.cforp.ca/ILR/GC/images/Framework%20of%20GC1.pdf

St. John, Kendal & Briel, Lori. (2017, April). Student Voice: A Growing Movement in Education that Benefits Students and Teachers. Retrieved from: https://centerontransition.org/publications/download.cfm?id=61