Blogging about my students blogging

Since I am having my students blog about blogging in their future classrooms, I thought it only fair for me to blog about them blogging about blogging in their future classroom. Whew, that was a mouthful... Reflection is an integral part of teacher education. As such, teacher educators should be mindful to encourage reflection among preservice teachers. It is one of the best ways to get students to translate theory into practice. One of the ways it can help is the use of blogging in conjunction with field experience or student teaching. When preservice teachers try a technique they were taught in methods classes the first time, it is likely that it will not work as planned, or at least not for all students. If preservice teachers reflect on what went well and what went not so well, they can think about why. Such reflection works better when the reflector can do so as soon as possible. With a blog, preservice teachers can reflect on a day's experience in a school that evening. And their comments can shortly be read by other preservice teachers as well as experienced teachers, who can provide insight as to what can be done better.

Back to this week's assignment, I will find it interesting to see what all ideas my students have for the use of blogs in the classroom. Obviously they all want to teach different levels, and even two students who want to teach third grade will likely have different takes on how blogs can be used in the classroom. Collective intelligence can be a powerful thing, and hopefully students will gain new ideas from reading each other's posts.