I liked the articles I read that were presented on classroom blogging, and tried to think about how the feedback given by the writers would affect my students in AP Biology. Since AP Biology includes a lot of writing prompts for the free-response sections of the test and also to demonstrate understanding of content, it occurred to me that a great way to integrate the a blog into the course would be to utilize it to have students submit free response essays. The style of the essay would be more communicative than most free responses, but would allow others to see how they were each thinking. To me, this sort of brings in the real world application that the authors of "Blog On" cited.
The ability to focus student review on a scientific concept and to have some collaboration between classes is also a system that I would like to begin to use. Classroom pairings can be useful learning tools, except when one student does all the work. By using a blog setup and pairing students between classes, it sort of forces them to both contribute, and allows me to see the depth of the contribution just by reading the postings. If one student was assigned to start the blog comment, and the other reply to begin the discussion, it would allow for one to ease into the role the first time around, and then the responsibility could be flipped. It also makes it that much harder for students to cheat by copying others since their blog discussion could take a uniquely different path while still remaining true to the topic.
I searched around for some ideas of how blogging was being integrated into the sciences, and one article I really liked was found at: Blogging in the Science Classroom: The Worksheet is Dead. I have been seeking to reduce my reliance on worksheets for a while now, and this seems like an interesting way to tackle this problem. I like how the author addresses both pros and cons in his article, and describes how he worked around the problems - solutions often fail to appear in articles like this so it was helpful to see the suggestions. The recommendation to use Google Reader to track students blog posts using the RSS feed was a great idea, and I loved the thought that students would have a permanent notebook online versus the pile of crowded papers. The old problem of students without access still rears its ugly head, but the online storage concept has really expanded our ability for students to learn in multiple locations, rather than carrying and losing the classic flash drive. I believe I will be trying out the blogging system with students in the spring and look forward to seeing how we all learn together.
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