Hearing Their Voices

Why blog? Why get your students blogging? I loved this post by Pernille Ripp: “So Blogging Is Just for Fun?” where she mentioned how enriching blogging has been for her students. I was a bit surprised when she mentioned that some teachers considered blogging was just a fun thing to do. Yes, it’s fun, but it’s all about learning… I would never say blogging is a waste of time. Many important newspapers have added blogs on their sites, many important writers and journalists are sharing their thoughts and reflections on their blogs! I’m absolutely convinced blogging is a powerful and important communication tool.

My students had their term tests last week and one of the tasks was to write a story. Reading their stories was highly rewarding. So much have their writing skills improved since we started blogging almost two months ago! I kept congratulating them, and then something magical happened. One girl raised her hand and said: “Ms. Greta, it’s the blog! I’ve improved my writing. This has been my best story ever. The blog has helped me.” Needless to say, it was one of my most memorable moments as a teacher. Kids associated blogging with learning. Kids admitted how much blogging has helped them. I had never told them that before. They had realized it just by themselves.

I kept thinking about Pernille Ripp‘s post… I felt kind of upset about teachers being reluctant to jump into such a meaningful experience and this inspired me to ask my students to post their thoughts on blogging.

Hearing our students’ voice is so important, after all, it’s their learning not ours! Let me tell you, their posts were powerfully inspiring!

You can read some of their posts on the slides below. You can also check out more stories on our blogs: Sharing Good News!

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The words: “learn, world, comment, blog” came up on most stories… Of course the word “fun” came up, but not on the first place…To be honest, I wasn’t surprised by their posts…I’ve noticed how much students enjoy learning when they find it relevant. The problem is when we expect them to get engaged in meaningless tasks. What has really surprised me is how grateful they are. They are thankful for having a learning opportunity. Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t it inspiring?

My students’ attitude towards our class blogs has made me realized that they find blogging meaningful. Blogging is meaningful learning! I think of it as a learning celebration…We learn and have fun at the same time. This experience has proved me once again that it’s up to us educators to encourage the love for learning by providing meaningful learning opportunities for our children. Kids aren’t lazy about learning; they are lazy about wasting their time in meaningless activities. Wouldn’t you be lazy about it too?

Learning becomes relevant when we connect it with reality. Therefore, we need to recreate today’s world inside our classrooms. We live in a global world, our classrooms must go global. Teachers must prepare students to interact in a global world. This is our reality. The world gets more and more connected every day. You can’t stop this from happening, so what are you going to do? Pretend it isn’t happening? We can’t avoid reality; we must face this and prepare our students to become leaders in a global world. So, let’s overcome our fears, let’s connect with reality. Let’s connect with our students’ learning and expand our classroom walls.