Connected Blogs Redefine Learning

This week my class did their final assessment for our archaeology unit. They picked an artifact, researched it, replicated it, wrote a description of it, translated that description into their home language, and presented everything at a classroom museum for parents and other classes to come see.

Amazing learning took place, but that’s where it stopped for my students last year. This year, we decided to continue the learning after the museum via our Seesaw class blog.

Seesaw Class Blog

The Seesaw Class Blog (see: Using Seesaw to Teach Students Social Media) in itself is very simple and easy to use. Any items students or teachers put on the regular Seesaw feed can be moved to the blog with a single click. Once on the blog, the item can be seen by all parents (on the Seesaw feed, parents can only see items their child is tagged on) as well as students in any connected blogs.

To connect a blog is simple.

1. Go to Manage Class: Class Blog: Connected Blogs: +Connect to Blog
2. Enter the blog URL of the class you want to connect with
3. Now all of your students can see the class blog that you are connected with

How Can the Blog Extend Learning?

Before our classroom museum opened, I took a picture of each group of students with their artifacts and posted it to the blog. After visiting our classroom museum, teachers from the other classes gave their students a few minutes to go to our blog to comment and ask questions.

The next day, my students were absolutely ecstatic to find that other students had liked and cared enough about their work to post something. We did a quick lesson on how to answer questions and they were off.

My students worked diligently to answer the questions – way more so than they would have had I asked the same ones. They went back to check facts about dates, wrote out each step they took making their replicas, and worked hard to have correct punctuation that might impress the older students.

The Blog Was Accessible to Non-Readers

One of the reasons Seesaw is able to work for young kids is their feature that allows comments to be made with a voice recording (See also: 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Seesaw). Many of the younger students asked their questions with their voices and one even asked my students to answer with a recording or video (which they did). This made it so that young students could actually ask questions themselves instead of needing the help of a teacher.

The Global Classroom Project

In addition to connecting blogs within our own school, it’s also possible to connect with classrooms around the world via Seesaw blogs. Zach’s class became pen pals with a class form Minnesota through theirs. Students comment on learning activities and post letters, pictures and videos. This is a screenshot of a video one student made explaining what tea ladies do in Sudan.

Have you used Connected Blogs to extend student learning? Please comment below and let us know what you’ve tried!

By @SGroshell

For more posts about Seesaw, check out Teacher Tool Kit For Seesaw. Keep coming back to educationrickshaw.com!