Blogs come to class

Passing notes in Kalyn Denny's fourth-grade class has gotten a little more high-tech — and gained a lot more teacher approval.

Students are sharing what they got for Christmas, favorite after-school activities, inquiring about peers and parents, and they're even getting to see what they are talking about on their fourth-grade class blog.

Most of her students at West Bountiful Elementary School hadn't even heard of blogging before this school year. Now, Denny said the students now know more about Internet publishing than a lot of adults.

A blog is a Web site where groups of users can communicate by producing an ongoing discussion. Group members can create posts and make comments.

There are thousands of different kinds of blogs out there, but some teachers are using them in the classroom as a way to keep in touch with parents, teach students about the Internet world and allow students to communicate with each other outside of class time.

"There are a lot of possibilities with blogging — it provides a great way for students to have an authentic audience for the work they are doing ... but the intrinsic motivation of being able to do it online is a help, and it can be a motivator to get students to write more," said Rick Gaisford, education technology specialist at the State Office of Education.

Pieter Lingen, a teacher at Highland Park Elementary, took a class on blogging through the Utah Education Network that helped him get started. Over the summer he took a trip to Europe and blogged each day so students could follow what he was doing.

Then during the school year he started a classroom blog.

"I set one up to inform parents about what was going on — it seems like a lot of times parents are out of the loop," Lingen said.

Because Lingen had to switch classrooms in the middle of the school year, he has fallen behind on keeping the blog updated. But Denny's class blog is alive and well.

Denny, who has an award-winning food blog, said she started the fourth-grade blog last year to help kids practice their typing and word-processing skills.

"They're totally learning how to do Internet publishing — they probably know more about it than most adults. It's important because that's the way of the future," Denny said.

She said another plus that comes with blogging is getting students excited to write about what is going on in their lives.

"It feels more impressive to them than writing it in a notebook at school," she said

Fourth-grader Jacob Foster said he spends around an hour a day after school on the class blog. Denny allows students to take time to post messages on the blog about once a month during class.

They share Halloween pictures, video game accomplishments and sports preferences.