Learning Geography through Blogging

We completed our travel blogs. This unit was a learning experience for me and my students. I started with trying to answer the question of what my students needed to know about geography and how to make it relevant to their lives. My teaching partner suggested they make brochures about places to visit in our state. To support our goal of integrating more technology we changed the final product from a brochure to a travel blog.
I started my creating a sample blog entry. This generated a lot of excitement with the students that they could be bloggers, too. From my sample, we created a rubric for what a quality travel blog entry should have. I was impressed at the thought process of the students. We also defined some key terms such as blog, hyperlink and rubric.
The next step was to have the students research locations. I put links to websites on a Symbaloo page. This kept the research focused. I provided some documents to support the students as they researched. These I developed as we went. Not all students needed the support but others had trouble with the research. This process took a little longer than I would have liked but as I said I was learning along with them.
After the students had gathered their research they created a Google doc as their blog entry. I then copied and pasted these entries into the blog. I decided this would be easier than having each student be included as an author on the blog. I also needed some control over the process. The exciting part of the writing process was how the students helped each other. I taught two students how to create a hyperlink and they took care of teaching others who in turn taught others. Inserting images followed the same pathway. It was empowering for the students and me to have them teach each other.
Finally they were able to see their work and read each other's work. I made the link public so they could read it. I gave them the task of choosing a blog entry that convinced them to visit the location. I tallied the votes and we used the data to have a conversation about opinion writing. This is the writing standard we are working on so it was a perfect connection.
The students were able to share their blog with their parents at our Family Literacy Night. There was an immense about of pride. Knowing their parents and their classmates could see their work published on the internet was highly motivating. I look forward to incorporating blogging into more of our writing projects.

Students shared their blog with their families