TWT2011-Using+Classroom+Blogs+to+Enhance+Student+Writing


 * Session: 21. Using Classroom Blogs to Enhance Student Writing**
 * Presenters: Jennifer Kirsch; Maureen Burgess**
 * School: Hewitt School**

Blogging in the classroom provides a powerful opportunity for students to develop their skills as writers while learning about media and technology. Dr. Maureen Burgess, Chair of the English Department and an upper school English teacher at The Hewitt School, uses blogging to explore with students how the medium expands both their sense of audience, using the comment feature and cross-referencing links, as well as the surface of the writing, through the inclusion of hyperlinks, video, and images. Jenny Kirsch, a 4th grade teacher at The Hewitt School, uses her classroom blog as a platform for many kinds of writing, including creative and descriptive writing, personal reflections and book and play reviews. In addition to sharing their individual reflections on the affordances and challenges of teaching students to blog, Kirsch and Burgess will also discuss their collaboration in which high school students visited the 4th grade bloggers to teach new skills such as adding images and links to their posts. Blogging in the classroom provides a powerful opportunity for students to develop their skills as writers while learning about media and technology.
 * Description:**

Participants in this workshop will learn how to start their own classroom blog, and see several examples of how to use blogging as a tool for writing.

Visit The Kirsch Class Blog

Visit American Writers Blog