Teacher touts blogs for learning
Published: September 19, 2006
“In this part of my blog, I’m going to tell you how I use modern day technology in my daily life. Well, first off, I begin my day by waking up, thanks to my alarm clock.”
That’s how one of Ben Goodman’s Cimarron Springs Elementary students started off an online journal known as a blog.
Goodman, a technology teacher, sees each class only twice a year, for three weeks at a time. He has to help students internalize what he teaches so it isn’t forgotten.
“I try to have them write about what they’re learning about,” said Goodman, who has been teaching in the Dysart Unified School District for 30 years. “The concept here is if you really internalize the concept, then you should be able to explain it to someone else.”
So Goodman combined teaching with technology to accomplish that goal.
“In my experience, when someone is writing and they know someone else will read it, they write better,” Goodman said.
The Web logs, or blogs, are posted on the Internet so that students can log on to read each other’s entries and make comments.
Goodman’s efforts in the classroom recently earned him the TeachersFirst Class Blogs Award from TeachersFirst.com, a Web resource for K-12 teachers.
“As the inaugural recipient of this honor, (Ben) Goodman is being recognized for actively using a classroom blog with students to facilitate student understanding, encourage writing expression and promote good writing skills,” said Candace Hackett Shively, director of K-12 at NITV, the parent company of TeachersFirst, in a statement.
But Goodman’s efforts don’t stop in the classroom - now he’s helping other teachers learn how to use the blogs so that they can continue with what he has taught their students.
“Quite a number of teachers . . . have formed their own blogs, and that’s what’s going to really change things,” Goodman said.
And students enjoy it, he said. It’s a real application of what they’re learning.
“I do think it helps,” he said. “You have a real audience. You stay a little sharper.”
And Goodman has to stay sharp as well, in a field that is always changing. He subscribes to newsletters and magazines to keep up on technology’s cutting edge. These new trends include wikis, collaborative, interactive Web sites, and podcasting, which is a way of distributing audio or video files over the Internet to mobile devices and personal computers.
Goodman adapts those cutting-edge ideas and brings them into the classroom.
“I think the job of technology . . . is to transform the way you teach, not to make little minor changes,” he said.
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