I am not so sure that the key to student engagement is the "blog," however, I would argue that the key is technology. Technology enables students and teachers to engage in various ways, and can create an organized structure to the instruction.
Face it, technology is not boring, rather technology makes things exciting! Technology also makes things faster, and if handled correctly, makes less busy work for students and teachers alike.
I have no doubt that most classes would succeed and excel with the integration of technology, and blogs are enabled by technology.
I agree - I wish more classes would integrate technology into the curriculum. It seems like it is limited by the technology available in classrooms though, making it hard for instructors to utilize in the physical classroom. But, utilizing online technology for outside of class work is always awesome and should be used more (in my opinion).
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that technology can improve a classroom—as a teacher, I use tech tools all the time—I think it has been given a bit too much of a false silver-bullet label. While technology and collaborative processes are useful tools, they don't solve the more fundamental issues educators face. Of course, I'm not suggesting anyone believes that simply applying technology is the answer to all of our problems, but I often here things that simply say, Use technology, and fail to address the issues of how to get students to engage actively with the technology. I think it's a fallacy to believe that students are all tech savvy and equally comfortable with technology. For these reasons, it places yet another challenger on educators to be sure they are taking the time to properly instruct students on ways to effectively use the tools we are asking to them to use in our classes.
ReplyDeleteI think teaching with blogs works for an online class, but im not sure if it works for other classes, if it is not mandatory to post regularly.
ReplyDeleteHaving it mandatory is probably the key. I enjoyed reading the posts and comments on this blog, but if it hadn't been a homework assignment, I might not have made time.
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