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| Fennec Fox |
I found an exceptional blog from a high school biology teacher, Stacy Baker, who first developed this blog to share class information. Baker saw the potential for the blog and decided to make it more interactive and have her students participate and even direct the conversation. This blog is called Extreme Biology and can be found at:
Biology is one subject that I am interested in teaching and using a blog like Baker’s would be an incredibly valuable to tool to encourage and foster a student’s interests in biology and science. Baker seems to take a democratic approach in having her students blog on topics that they are interested in. Baker and her students were featured in The Scientist magazine and below are a couple quotes from their interview:
"My duty as a teacher isn't just teaching them stuff," Baker said. "It's how to analyze information rather than just memorize it."
The students can write about anything and everything, as long as it's biology-related, explained Baker. "I don't like assigning them specific topics," she said. "I want them ideally looking into subjects that they're interested in or passionate about."
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| Myanmar Pug Monkey |
Another interesting feature of this blog is the range of topics that are discussed. These topics include Animal Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, Genetics, and Medicine. While exploring this blog I found a section under the Topics We Cover header called EFMB which stands for Endless Forms Most Beautiful. I immediately saw two posts, which caught my attention mainly because of their pictures, titled Bless You, Myanmar Pug Monkey! and Are Fennecs Foxes? This blog also features guests who have been invited to blog on topics in which they are experts in.
I may use this blog as a model to help provoke enthusiasm, participation, and understanding in whatever I may teach. The flow of information should not be unidirectional and with the Extreme Biology blog it cycles around from teacher to student, or vice versa, and back again. This blog is an example of how a teacher can use technology to communicate to students by engaging and making them excited to learn. EFMB can also be a celebration of each student's potential.
So why blog to learn about science? Baker’s students answered that question in the following video:
I think the students' comments in the video sum up how I feel about this topic. It’s a really neat way to promote learning in a, like you said, democratic context. This classroom blogging approach seems to evoke high levels of student participation and interest. One of the students in the video mentioned he preferred the blogging method to the standard textbook approach- my only concern would be how to learn to use this tool effectively, as opposed to the standard approach, which is all I ever really saw in my educational past. In the end, as we are learning, we as educators must learn to innovate and change with the times and technology- especially if this tool, or any other, seems to speak so loudly to students.
ReplyDeleteI like that you always put pictures up on your blogs. It makes it fun to look at. I think next time I am going to invest more time looking for pictures. I really enjoyed looking at the blogs that you found. I am going to be an elementary school teacher so I woln't be teaching such elaborate biology practices but it gave me really good ideas that I can use with my younger kids.
ReplyDeleteI like this blog...it's different than many of the ones I've seen in the sense that most of these blogs are meant for other teachers. This one seems to be geared towards the students instead. I think this really fits well into what we've been talking about as far as education vs. schooling. Some of the comments even demonstrated that. I think it's great that there are teachers out there who are interested enough in the education that their students are getting (in addition to just the information they are being fed) to take the time to find stories that relate to their subject and blog about them. It shows me just the kind of teacher I know I want to be and that I wish all teachers were.
ReplyDeleteI think what I like most about this blog is that it incorporates the students' learning into the process of blogging. And, the kids in the video seem to enjoy it. Imagine that, kids enjoying learning at school...Using this as a model for your own teaching will be valuable.
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