Students go online to share results

Blogs, or online journals, are linking people everywhere these days. They are even branching out into school.

Teacher Kelly Green has tapped into blogs as a teaching tool to help students in her seventh-grade science classes at Louis L. Redding Middle School become better readers and writers. She uses an online journal to allow students to share their experiments and discuss science-related topics.

Some people might think practicing reading and writing skills is better suited for English class than science lab. But Green would disagree.

After students collect data from an experiment, for instance, they have to explain their findings in a way others will understand to post those comments on the blog, she said.

Blogging not only lets students at the Middletown school learn to do that, it is something they like to do. There's a keyboard to punch. The words are on a computer screen with colorful pictures. It's a big step up from writing comments and ideas with a boring pencil and piece of paper, or only interacting with each other through raised hands in a classroom.

Green said she sees a difference in how the students are expressing themselves.

"The quietest student that I can't get to say two words in the classroom will write volumes on the computer because they don't feel intimidated about being called out," she said. "They can sit there on their own and put what they think on there. It gives them a huge level of confidence, too, especially students who are special-education students.

"I think it's the familiarity with the technology," Green said. "It is definitely more fun and more interactive. It gives them 90 other students that they can interact with. They also learn that they have a lot more in common with each other than they think."

The trick is to get her students to respond to discussion topics in complete sentences, not with the familiar shorthand that has become so popular in electronic communication, she said. For instance, phrases like "c u l8r" (see you later) and other expressions often dashed off in informal e-mails or text messages are not permitted on the blog.

"We're trying to make them use technology to be more fluent writers and readers," Green said. "They don't get to do that very often. The students tend to write the way they speak, and 99 percent of the time it's not correct."

Slang and misspelled words are OK among their friends, she said. But when the students have to respond to a science question on a state test -- or when they have to write something in the work world -- they need to know how to write properly.

Adult supervision

Green said she monitors her students' blogging comments, correcting them as the need arises. She also makes sure nothing inappropriate goes online.

So far, Green has limited her students to writing comments on a blog she created and runs for her classroom. The four seventh-grade classes can respond either at school or on a home computer.

On one recent post, Green asked her students to write about their favorite science topic -- and it drew 176 comments.

Later this school year, she will give the students an opportunity to create their own blogs. They also will have to read a book on ecology and respond to specific questions about it. The postings won't be accessible to the public, said Green, who will continue to monitor what her students write on the science blogs.

"Kids of today have grown up with computers, so they're much more comfortable with it than kids of 10 years ago were," Green said. "They're also interacting with each other in real time. They don't have to sit for a long time with their hand raised and forget what they're going to say."

So far, the students are enjoying being able to share their ideas online.

"I like being able to converse in the luxury of my own home," said Ryan Christian, 13. "I have tons of time to think about what I want to say instead of running out of time when the teacher moves on. It is also fun getting to read what all of the other students have to say."

"The blogging is very helpful," said Aziah Smith, 12, "especially when we have to do projects. It gives you a way to make easy connections to the information we need."