HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking, puts forth the idea of using blogs in the language arts classroom and follows one educator's journey in implementing them with her fifth grade class. The teacher began her blog as a reading response blog in which she would post a discussion and children had to post their responses. After her students' waning interest she posted the question about what they could do to use the blog in other ways. We find out that in response to her students answer to what they would like to use the blog for, she allowed for students to post different work on the blog, post their own sets of questions, and even work to bring in outside literature they were excited about.
The article describes what a weblog or "blog" is in general and goes on to say that the Internet is this generation's most important technology for literacy. Each aspect of the Internet requires new skills that the schools need to prepare students for including collaboration, problem solving on the Internet, and communicating safely on the Internet. Classroom news blogs, mirror blogs, showcase blogs, and literature response blogs were the four types of blogs the author mentioned as being used most often.
After outlining the steps for best going about creating a blog, the steps for HOT blogging became the focus. Beginning with the idea of bolstering the background the teacher posts activities and questions that help students build their background knowledge of the chosen subject. After building background knowledge, teachers "prime the pump" by inviting students to share their thinking, including confusions, summaries of what they learned so far, and self connections. The goal of this is to give other students an opportunity to read and then prepare themselves for conversation. Next, the teacher facilitates continuing the conversation by having students synthesize their knowledge gained from multiple texts including their background research, other student comments, and the direct text they are studying. Lastly, the teacher directs students to read, think, and comment on the blog. All of these steps work together to promote a higher level of thinking.
Overall, I felt this was a very interesting article. I liked the personal aspect of it, bringing in a teacher who was just learning about how to use blogging in her own classroom. She got frustrated at first, because students were starting to lose interest. After asking them how they thought they could use the blog, she was able to provide other opportunities for learning by incorporating their ideas. This idea of asking the children what they want out of it is in itself a higher order thinking that I appreciated. In my own teaching I often allow for this constructivist practice, giving students access to materials and giving them a task such as making up their own game to learn note names. The results of this are better than anything that I could come up with on my own. This makes me believe that students want to be encouraged in this way. They want to be given the opportunity to respond to each other and to the teacher in their own comfort zone, which is often using technology. The steps outlined in this article were helpful in that it lays out a practical way to apply it to your own teaching, but outlines a very vigorous first attempt at blogging. I feel like a first time blogger would be better off using blogs in one of the four ways mentioned first, like a classroom news blog before getting into something as deep as this higher order of thinking framework.
Zawilinski, L. (2009). Hot blogging: A framework for blogging to promote higher order thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(8), 650-661.
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