I know I haven't posted too much on here but I've been stalking foodie and textile blogs to get new ideas for my classroom and help my mentee! Also, I've been digging into Pinterest for new ideas (which often link to more blogs!). It's lead to experimentations in my kitchen, a dining room table filled with crafts every weekend and new books on my bookshelves. :)
In any case, this blogging thing is something I'm going integrate into my teaching next fall. In the past, students have been required to complete one home cooking assignment a month. It was a pencil and paper type thing. Why am I still allowing such an archaic practice to occur when students can more readily track their culinary adventures on the internet? And, why limit their opportunity to explore to just family recipes or cookbooks at their house? Well, I decided - NO MORE! I've decided that next year I'm going to have all of my Baking & Pastry students blog at least one time a month and either post a link/comments to other blogs they follow on our site. This way, they can try new recipes and share their adventures with their classmates! They can more readily critique their experience and tell their classmates what was great and not so great! I'm going to have to connect with kara and other blogger people to see how this works in the classroom. I want it to be as successful as possible so talking with those folks first might provide me with insight I hadn't already thought of!
I think incorporating blogging will be great with these students. I teach at Minnesota State University, Mankato and have really been trying to utilize technology as much as I can. We do a lot of online discussion posts and it seems to really get everyone involved. At first I had to set standards and limits on how many times they had to post, but now in the class, it seems so natural for them all to engage in more than just the required amount. I think utilizing blogging in the high school setting is very beneficial, especially for those going on to college as it is prevalent at the college/university setting.
ReplyDeleteExcited to hear how it goes Shawna!
What program do you use at MSU-Mankato? Have you surveyed your students to get their perceptions of online discussions? I still remember being new to Instant Messenger in college, not to mention things like online discussion boards!
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