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Professional Education Blogs
Blogging Across the Curriculum
As technologies continue to simplify the process by which students can publish content to the web, it becomes ever more important for teachers to understand 21st century learning. They are responsible for applying the state and national standards to the open connections, open conversations, open content, and open learning that accompany education in the digital age. One early step that many teachers take with their students is the creation of classroom and individual blogs. As of early 2009, Technorati.com, one of many blog-tracking services, listed over 133 million blogs (short for Weblogs).
In short, how can we use these tools to enhance classroom learning?
Although the nature of Weblogs makes them fairly obvious tools for teaching writing and reading, educators are using blogs in all areas of the curriculum to collaborate with subject-specific experts, to archive learning, to share results of experiments, and to publish student work. Blogging across the curriculum offers students and teachers not only the ability to infuse writing into all disciplines, it facilitates connections in ways that plain paper cannot. What makes a good blog?
Here's a list of "Good Educator's Blogs" to read. However, you may want to search for other blogs that more closely align with your own professional interests. Next week you will pick two blogs to follow throughout the course on your own blog.
As technologies continue to simplify the process by which students can publish content to the web, it becomes ever more important for teachers to understand 21st century learning. They are responsible for applying the state and national standards to the open connections, open conversations, open content, and open learning that accompany education in the digital age. One early step that many teachers take with their students is the creation of classroom and individual blogs. As of early 2009, Technorati.com, one of many blog-tracking services, listed over 133 million blogs (short for Weblogs).
In short, how can we use these tools to enhance classroom learning?
Although the nature of Weblogs makes them fairly obvious tools for teaching writing and reading, educators are using blogs in all areas of the curriculum to collaborate with subject-specific experts, to archive learning, to share results of experiments, and to publish student work. Blogging across the curriculum offers students and teachers not only the ability to infuse writing into all disciplines, it facilitates connections in ways that plain paper cannot. What makes a good blog?
Here's a list of "Good Educator's Blogs" to read. However, you may want to search for other blogs that more closely align with your own professional interests. Next week you will pick two blogs to follow throughout the course on your own blog.
- David Warlick http://tinyurl.com/j6shy
- Clay Burrell http://tinyurl.com/ytfbro
- Chris Lehmann http://tinyurl.com/62az3t
- Jeff Utecht http://tinyurl.com/2c2ery
- Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach http://tinyurl.com/ed270-5
- Stephen Downes http://tinyurl.com/164y6
- Danah Boyd http://tinyurl.com/zuer7
- Tom Hoffman http://tinyurl.com/225srt
- Vicki Davis http://tinyurl.com/lwwbt9
- Shelly Blake-Plock http://tinyurl.com/cz3b3f
Classroom Uses of Blogs
You might like to create a reflective, journal-type blog to
You might like to start a class blog to
You might encourage your students (either on your Weblog using the comments feature or on their own Weblogs) to blog
You might have your students create their own Weblogs to
You can also ask your class to create a shared Weblog to
from Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts
You might like to create a reflective, journal-type blog to
- Reflect on your teaching experiences etc.,
- Keep a log of teacher-training experiences etc.
- Write a description of a specific teaching unit
- Describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn’t work
- Provide some teaching tips for other teachers
- Write about something you learned from another teacher
- Explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes
- Share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom
- Provide some “how-to’s” on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class
- Explore important teaching and learning issues
You might like to start a class blog to
- Post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments, and other pertinent class information
- Post assignments based on literature readings and have student respond on their own Weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work
- Communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students
- Post prompts for writing
- Provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games
- Provide online readings for your student to read and react to
- Gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them
- Post photos and comment on class activities
- Invite student comments or posting on issues in order to give them a writing voice
- Publish examples of good student writing done in class
- Showcase student art, poetry, and creative stories
- Create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning
- Create a literature circle (where groups of students read and discuss the same book
- Create an online book club
- Make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills
- Ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions, and written work
- Post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students
- Build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take
- Link your class with another class somewhere else in the world
You might encourage your students (either on your Weblog using the comments feature or on their own Weblogs) to blog
- Their reactions to thought-provoking questions
- Their reactions to photos you post
- Journal entries
- Results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit
- Their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class
You might have your students create their own Weblogs to
- Learn how to blog
- Complete class writing assignments
- Create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing
- Express their opinions on topics you are studying in class
- Write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest
- Discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them
- Write about class topics, using newly learned vocabulary words and idioms
- Showcase their best writing pieces
You can also ask your class to create a shared Weblog to
- Complete project work in small groups, assigning each group a different task
- Showcase products of project-based learning
- Complete a WebQuest (an online-structured research activity)
- Share ideas you have for using Weblogs in education
from Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts