How can blogs promote student reading & writing in an elementary school classroom?

Click Here to see my Technology Inquiry Screencast!         

I feel as though I exerted a lot of effort on completing this task. This requirement was the largest project I worked on all semester. I can honestly say I spent a lot of time and effort researching and creating this project. I started simple and I created my question. The question I came up with for my technology inquiry project was “How can blogs promote reading and writing in an elementary school classroom?” I chose this question because I have truly enjoyed working with “blogger.com” this semester and I was very interested to learn more about how I can use this tool in my future classroom. From there I simply started my research. I looked for formal resources (journals, articles, etc.), but I was also very interested in looking for informal resources, such as a real blog from an educator. It was much easier looking for informal resources; I found at ton of blogs from actual elementary school teachers. On the other hand, I had a much more difficult time finding formal sources. I even had to go into see Professor Boyer to ask him if he had any suggestions on how to find formal sources; I think this alone shows the amount of effort I put into this project. After meeting with Professor Boyer I did not have any difficulty finding the sources that I need. I was quickly able to find a few articles that had great information! After I found my resources I began by creating my annotated bibliography. I am glad I did this before I began my actual paper because it helped me reflect upon the resources that I found and which ones would be most beneficial for my project. Finally, I put all the information together. There were quite a few methods that were common among articles and these were the ones I wrote about on my wiki.

        I feel as though there is high value in completing this task. The resources I found for this project are ones that I will keep and refer to in my future classroom. I think this goes for everyone that completed this project. I hope to scan other peoples’ resources in order to better my knowledge on technological tools.

        This task highly impacts my future as an educator. Like I already mentioned, the resources I found for this project will stay with me throughout my life. Yes, there will be other resources that come along in the future, but these are just as important! This project also highly impacts my future because it taught me some valuable researching skills. It taught me how to look for information and decide what information was going to be helpful for my paper. It also taught me to decide if that information was even reliable! I can use these skills in the future when looking for activities or lessons I may do with my students. I hope to use creative and innovative instructional strategies and I will openly admit that I don’t know all these creative and innovative strategies off the top of my head. I can use these important skills to research the things I will need for my classroom, students, parents, and administrators.