Welcome back!
This week’s Caffeine Question is this… What is your take on London Fog Lattes? I haven’t tried one yet, but would love to know your thoughts if you have! Comment below!
So this week is all about exactly what I’m doing today, writing blogs! As history teachers, we know classroom discussions are necessary in order to get students to use their thinking caps and work together to understand history. And with those group discussions come the online discussions. Before the pandemic, I was taking a class related to history in the digital age. Instead of posting our usual discussions on a Canvas assignment page, we created our own blogs! I loved this style change, so much that I am continuing with writing! This brings me to my discussion this week, discussion posts turned blog posts.
Let’s get into it!
As we continue through the pandemic and online/hybrid classes, discussion posts are beginning to be a regular assignment, much like an essay question on a history test. However, these can be somewhat draining to students. A new way to keep the discussion aspect can be seen with blogs. By allowing students to work through their own websites, they are able to receive more creativity as compared to trying to meet the word count on a discussion board. Along with this, they are able to have a little more flexibility with their final product. This can be seen with their inclusion of memes, YouTube videos, or links to articles or books that helped them in their research. This can also allow them to feel more comfortable discussing the topic of the week without the fear of judgment by their peers. One of the biggest fears I had when beginning to do discussion boards for classes was the fear that what I was saying would sound wrong or silly, and possibly resulting in being called out by a fellow student. Talk about social anxiety! By giving them their own platform to talk openly can help eliminate those fears, allowing students to talk more freely and really dive into the discussion topic.
There are many ways these blog posts can be incorporated into the classroom as an educational resource.
- The first example is obvious, have students create their own free website in order to use as their platform in answering weekly discussions relating to the lesson or readings for the week. Comments can be included in this by assigning commenters or rotating commenters through each website weekly.
- The next would be to create discussion groups for students to work together when creating a website and working on the discussion posts weekly, bi-weekly, or even quarterly during the school year. Students can rotate as the creator of the post by compiling everyone’s research into a single discussion, or they can discuss together within the blog post itself. Work like this can usually be made easier with the help of a shared Google Doc, or similar platform depending on your school’s choice.
- The third goes back to individual websites, assigning students their own discussion topic for the school year to work on throughout the year to show how much their research and understanding of the topic has progressed.
- And finally, creating a single website for students to rotate through weekly with writing their response to your discussion topic. This can be done with a single student a week, or a group of students creating their own posts to submit to the site weekly.
Sometimes we need a change of scenery and what better way of doing that than by working to make something that is your own? With a little help from sites such as Wix.com and WordPress.com, students and teachers will be able to create their own historical websites in a way that shows their interests in history while also continuing their engagment in the classroom!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s short post about turning discussions into blog posts, like always if there are any questions comments, or concerns, do comment below or contact via the contact page!
Until next time!
THE CAFFEINATED HISTORIAN 