To blog or microblog?

Categories: s1 and s2, Geography General

I was reading an article yesterday about how twitter is apparently leading to less people writing regular blogs. I have to say that I've become quite reliant on it, it's an absolutely great place as a teacher to share ideas and to watch other ones develop as responses are limited to 140 characters. I'm not sure about the merits of pupil use, but I have been thinking about this type of 'microblogging' for looking at how well students have understood learning intentions. Regular readers will be aware that I've been using edmodo primarily with s2, and have found it to be great for collecting homework evidence, but a few members of the class have latched on to the fact that they can leave messages for the group. It would be nice to encourage more people to use this function in a fruitful way to check understanding. I'm going to ask s2 to traffic light their comprehension of the next two weeks of lessons (6 periods) and ask for comments to be blogged through edmodo, where there is the option to make the comment public to the group or direct to me. I'd really like to encourage a free discussion of work through this platform, and see an extension of this type of activity into online debating (something I think would be particularly valuable for the upper school).