Blogging with Coworkers

Raise your hand if you've ever wished there was an easy way to share ideas between your fellow teachers. I'm sure that most of you are nodding your heads, or maybe even raising your hand (don't be embarrassed). Blogging is an easy and convenient way for educators to share ideas. All it takes is one teacher to start the blog and advertise it to staff, which isn't difficult with CLC. Maybe, just maybe, that person could be you! Given that educational technology is becoming your expertise, you are the perfect person for the job! Here are some organizational ideas to get you started!

• Create a new blog for each grade level.

• Within each grade level blog, create a page for each content area:
• Reading
• Writing (6+1 Traits?)
• Math
• Science
• Social Studies
• Health

• Advertise, advertise, advertise! As we know, it takes a while for people to buy into new technologies. Continue to advertise these new blogs. You could even ask your administrators if you can conduct a mini-professional development at a staff meeting.
  

• I would suggest using Blogger; it is much more user friendly than Edublogs.
  

I hope this helps to get your engines running! Although overwhelming at times, we really are lucky to be teaching and learning during this time of rapid technological development.

Blogging With Students

You may be thinking to yourself, 'how can I use blogging to enhance my instruction?' Well, you've come to the right place. I've been thinking a lot about how I can use blogging with my students, and as I said earlier, it is always nice to have list of resources to get started with. I have found some extremely helpful websites that are full of ideas for blogging with students of all ages.

Teachers First Blog Ideas - This site lists blogging ideas for students in grades one through twelve. Most of the ideas are language arts related, but some cover social studies and science content.

Using Blogs in the Classroom - This site lists more language arts related blogging ideas.


I really like many of the ideas discussed at these two websites, but I also see blogging as a way for students to connect to other students around the country and the world. Most of these ideas keep the blogging within the walls of one classroom.

To begin, I can see a blog going schoolwide. It would be a great way for students in different grades to connect to one another. One idea that comes to mind immediately is the holiday season. Most of the grades in our school do some sort of holiday rotation where they learn about the winter holidays of different cultures. Most of these cultures are represented in our school, and wouldn't it be extraordinary for students to be able to share their personal experiences and questions with each other? Teachers could start each blog by giving a brief background of each holiday. Students of all grades could then respond with experiences they've had, as well as questions that they have about the holidays. I can see this as being a great way to motivate students to learn about other cultures. Click here to see the winter holidays blog that I created to use next year. Families can also get involved in this initiative. Students can work with their family members to create posts the showcase their family traditions. The nice thing about Edublogs is that all of the comments will be sent to me before being posted to the Internet. My blog is still in the works, but I am really excited to use it this year!

Blog? What's that?

Blogs have been around for some time now, but I have never really taken the opportunity to research what they are all about. This is yet another reason why I have really enjoyed completing this project. It has forced me to take the time to sit down and research the technologies that I have never made the time for before.

The word "blog" is short for the term "web log." A blog is essentially an online journal, where posts are written by an individual and can be commented on by select users, depending on the individual's preference. Blogs began, and are still used, as online diaries. Users can put details of their daily lives out there for the world to see. Today, the use of blogs has expanded to anything from corporate businesses and political campaigns to in depth discussions of just about any topic imaginable. Although blogs consist mainly of text, users can now post pictures, as well and video and audio files. Blogger and Edublogs are popular blogging sites to use. As an educator, I like the feature in Edublogs that sends comments to the administrator before posting to the web, but I am drawn to the ease using Blogger.