The Purpose of Blogging in Kindergarten
Purpose of blogging at kindergarten are to motivate students to learn, to reinforce students' memory by giving opportunities to output their gained knowledge, and sharing information with parents. By blogging, students publish and display work done in the classroom or at home. "Class activities and assignments acquire relevance and meaning when students realize that their work is going to be seen by a broader audience. " (Maloy, 2016). Students feel accomplished when they get acceptance, praise, and feedback from others. Also according to the YouTube video bellow, blogging improve students-parents communication. By sharing school work through blog, parents and children have common topic to talk. Parents and children do not need to repeat conversation like "What did you do in school today?" "Nothing!" Parents can ask about the specific school project, and students can talk about what they learned from the work.
Tillyer Michael. (2012). Retrieved September 30, 2016 from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB3HjtPVOrg
As an example of blogging at kindergarten, I will introduce Matt Gomez's blogging at his kindergarten classroom. In his classroom, all children have individual blogs with KidBlog. His main purpose of the individual blogs is "their growth in writing and vocabulary" (Gomez, 2015). He has each student share their daily journal on the blog once a week, however he does not decide what to share and how they share their information to promote their initiative learning. "They can type a post as is traditional or they can upload a picture of a journal page, record audio, use apps to create video or embed books for various apps and websites" (Gomez, 2015). He sees the blog beneficial, also because it allows students to blog "any time they are motivated to share their learning." As the above YouTube video warms at the end of the video, there are always drawbacks to consider. I recommend to set rules which are shared among students, parents, teachers, and school. To see example of Matt's blog, please click Here.
