blogging

Educational Blogging
Blogs are wonderful tools for education and can serve a number of purposes. In fact, the very first post on my own blog was called "[|Why Blog?]"

Many teachers find themselves wondering "Why should I implement blogging in my instruction?" or "How will blogging benefit me and my students?" Below are a few ideas for implementing blogging in your classroom:
 * Reflective writing for all subject areas.This could be reflection over readings in class, assignments, group projects, or anything else pertaining to your curriculum
 * Review of content skills
 * Have students post one thing they know about the civil war, or reducing fractions, or photosynthesis, or persuasive writing.
 * Online journals - You know, instead of hauling around all of those spiral notebooks!
 * Static classroom website
 * Communicate with parents
 * Blog pals - updated version of pen pals


 * Blogging Basics Website** - This is a great website that explains what a blog is, gives ideas for classroom applications, and walks teachers through the first steps of implementing a blog into their classroom.

**Things to Keep in Mind**
When embarking on the adventure that is blogging, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
 * 1) If you are going to have your students interact with you blog by adding comments or posts, you should send home a letter to parents informing them of such. A blogging contract isn't a bad idea either. That way everyone is on the same page and aware of the expectations.
 * 2) Teach and model internet safety. Just because our students are surrounded with technology and can take it apart and put it back together faster than most adults can figure out how to turn it on doesn't mean they intuitively know how to stay safe online. The VIDEOS page has an excellent video to share with your students about how quickly information can travel on the internet.
 * 3) Have an idea and start small. If you are creating a blog simply because it's a cool technology tool your students will see through that and quickly become bored with it. Start with a specific reason, such as online journaling, and grow from there.
 * 4) Monitor your blog. Any and all content that is on your blog is ultimately your responsiblity and is open for all of the world to see. It is your responsibility to not only teach your students appropriate ways to comment, but also to monitor those comments. Most blogging tools have features that allow you to moderate and approve comments for your blog before they are published.
 * 5) Check your links to make sure they're still good. There are very few things more annoying than clicking on a link that is going to be "really cool" and finding it to be a dead link. So, check you links every once in a while to make sure they're still good.
 * Note, when adding links it is a good idea to actually go to the site and copy the web address and paste it directly into your blog. There are a lot of sites out there that if you change the domain from a .gov or .edu to a .com, you will be sending blog visitors to undesirable sites.

**Here are a few examples of how some educators are implementing blogging into their learning environments:**
Mr. Losik's - http://mrlosik.blogspot.com Tom Woodward - http://bionicteaching.com