Technology in the Classroom

We definitely live in a day and age when technology is prominent in the lives of everyone, even our children. My students, who are in 6th grade, spend hours everyday using technology. Most of my students communicate with their friends mostly through text messages and they all have computers at their homes. It was about two years ago when I realized that if I was effectively going to engage
my students, I needed to increase the amount of technology I used in my classroom. One of the “projects” I adopted was that of a classroom blog. I created a blog on our classroom website and assigned my students weekly homework that needed to be posted to the blog. Usually the assignment includes reading an article and posting a response or summary. I was expecting my students to love the weekly blog assignment, but to be honest, most of them hate it. I think they dislike it because it isn’t something that can be done quickly; it requires critical thinking and it’s difficult for students who struggle with writing. The parents of my students usually love the blog assignment because they are able to access their child’s writing and see the writing that other students have posted. I have tried to increase student effort on the blogs by choosing some of the best blogs each week and posting them in the classroom (I make a conscious effort to make sure that different students are chosen each week). I also try to add some degree of choice to the assignments by sometimes allowing the students to choose what article they’d like to read or what topic they’d like to write about.
I am torn about how I feel about the blogs. On one hand, they’re effective and I see how the students’ writing improves throughout the year. I am able to give the students quick feedback about their writing and the blogs ensure that the students practice writing on all different topics. Overall, it is a great teaching tool. My reservations about the blogs come from the fact that technology isn’t foolproof. Often students will post to the blog, but it won’t end up showing up on the website. Sometimes the blog won’t work on a child’s home computer and I’ll have to make arrangements for the assignment to be completed at school. Another thing that bothers me about the blogs (which I hate to admit) is that they take me forever to grade. I always have to spend an hour or two on the weekend grading them and providing feedback. Sometimes I wonder if all the work is really worth it.
I am pretty certain that I am going to continue to use blogs in my classroom next year, but I am hoping to try to make some adaptations that might reduce my frustrations. This summer, I also learned how to use GoogleDocs. I think that my students might have a great time working on GoogleDocs and it would be a great way to incorporate both technology and cooperative learning. The way I figure it, technology isn’t going anywhere, and so I better keep learning new ways to utilize it in the classroom so that I can stay one step ahead of my students.