When nine-year-old Martha Payne set up the blog Never Seconds a few months ago, to show pictures and write reports of her daily school lunch in Scotland – sometimes not as healthy as one would expect– it was meant as a personal writing project that would be seen by only her aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas.
But the word spread out over social media, and in just a couple of weeks, thousands of people had viewed Martha’s posts and pictures of her school lunch, sitting on a white tray.
She managed to use the attraction her blog was causing all over the world to not only improve her school meals, but also to raise more than £100,000 for a charity providing school food for impoverished children worldwide.
Blogs are a very powerful tool to empower student action and help students reflect and share interests, hobbies, learning experiences while building writing abilities.
I am a blogger myself, and what I love the most about blogging is knowing that I am actually writing for a Global Audience. That means that anyone in the world at any time can read what I write, leave positive comments and discuss these ideas with me. It helps me understand my own thoughts better while challenging my own perceptions.
At BISS we believe in 21st Century learning, and blogging is getting viral through our new BISS Blog Network (http://blogs.biss.com.cn). Through our Blog Network, students and teachers are expanding their learning experiences beyond the classroom environment and traditional school schedule constraints.
Blogs are allowing BISS teachers and students collaborate in cross-curricular projects and provide the opportunity for feedback from anyone in the world, creating limitless collaborative options and improve student writing.