art ed + web 2.0 + [e]merging media blog

It's Vygotskian because learning is scaffolded. Students have a sense of working on their own to achieve a goal and then move forward towards the next goal.

I think blogging would be a great tool with the special needs population. It is a concern for students who have dyslexia or other issues related to reading and writing. These types of students may need a scribe (which could be arranged through some sort of service-learning partnership with a local university perhaps). Other issues that would arise could be related to grammar and spelling problems. Many of the students I dealt with will totally withdraw when asked to write something so that would be a challenge. It would take a lot of prompting and they would have to already trust the teacher before being asked to write for them. I had one girl ask what writing had to do with art...this is not unique to the special needs population, many students do not see the connections between art and writing. So, I think for the most part that using blogs with students who have special needs would be no different than using them with any other group of students.

If blogs were done collaboratively (in pairs maybe) then they could be an interesting version of class reports that could extend throughout the entire semester. At the school that I was working with, the students have a theme every year that teachers try to link to. It's basically like a schoolwide big idea that everyone deals with and that guides the end of the year festival. Blogs could TOTALLY play into this...and could actually get better content out of the students than typical writing assignments because the students would have a sense of ownership over the content and the blog itself.