Teachers, Blogs & the Law

Update on blogs in the Classroom: Violence and Video Games

Hey guys,

Today I tried something new with my students. I taught most of my class how to make blogs, rather than just a handful of students. I must say it was a daunting task teaching students with special needs how to create a blog. Hands were flying up like popcorn. Thus, I learned a great deal from my little experiment.

Anyhow, I managed to teach 22 middle schoolers to blog on Blogger.com. Eventually, I want the kids to be able to on-line journal daily. However, for now it will have to be once a week because we are all sharing the computer lab with other classes.

I had the kids answer a prompt to get the ball rolling on their journaling. The question was, "Do video games cause violent behavior?" I was interested in this topic because the kids have been wanting to discuss a recent event involving one of their schoolmates (and former student of mine) involving violence. The student was arrested for nearly beating his two-year-old cousin to death and blamed a video game for his behavior. (The student will not be returning to our school and has been placed in a residential school setting). However, I thought this could be a "teachable moment" within our classroom since the kids really wanted to discuss the topic and debrief their feelings (e.g. fears, confusion, surprise) about it.

Hence, I will note various sides of the debate from student perspectives as noted per their blogs and we use this as a springboard for a class discussion about violence. Alas, my most of students responded really well to the blog format once they got through their initial frustrations. One girl wrote a whole page. I also noticed that a few kids who typically aren't concened about grammar and spelling really paying attention to detail, which was good. Hopefully, knowing the blog has a wide audience will inspire more students to pay attention to grammar and spelling. Most of all though, seeing the kids faces light up as they saw their work published on the web was great. I'll soon post some of the student responses for you to see. Please feel free to comment. Once again thank you for visiting Teachers, Blogs, and the Law. : )

Here's a link from the Davis & Company Law Firm
http://www.davis.ca/community/blogs/video_games/archive/2005/04/08/75.aspx

posted by Mechelle De Craene @ 3:48 PM