Uses+of+Blogs+in+the+Classroom

=Uses of Blogs in the Classroom =

Weblogs are becoming a popular trend in education. Teachers are using blogs to enhance and support curriculum, and as a device to keep parents and students informed of events and classroom expectations. In an effort to stay current some school websites are now maintained as blogs. It seems that blogs can be as simple or as complex as their designer chooses and can be informational only or extremely collaborative. So lets take a look at several ways that blogs are being used in today’s classroom.

**Class Portal** A popular method of using blogs in the classroom is by constructing a class portal. This is an ideal environment to share information about the class and archive class materials. Think of it as an old-fashioned message board with attached bins for handouts, only of course it is totally paperless. Students can visit the class portal blog to check assignments, deadlines, print out necessary handouts, or communicate questions and reply to others. And becasue it is web based parents also have quick and easy access to assignment due dates. Most blog software also includes notification features that automatically notify students and parents when new naterials are posted. This could also be accomplihed by setting up an RSS feed for the blog.

Some tips from Will Richardsonon what might be included in a Class Portal Blog.
 * course curriculum
 * syllabus
 * class rules
 * homework assignments
 * rubrics
 * handouts
 * insturctional presentations
 * recommended resources
 * response prompts and pictures

CLASS PORTAL BLOG EXAMPLES
 * [|Room 231] is a pretty remarkable blog used by a fifth grade class at ISB (International School Bangkok.) Each student has their own blog where they activly respond to writing prompts and pictures/videos and to one another as well. Becasue of it's blogical nature outsiders can also respond and there is a post on the main page about a school in California that would like to form a learning partnership. In some ways this is also a collaborative blog but there are two features that I found remarkable about this blog from a class portal point of view. First, is it's excellent list of web activities (resources) and second, is it's remarkable .blogging contract.


 * Jessica Magrum's Classroom Blog is on the basic end of spectrum when looking at examples of Class Portal Blogs. The first thing you will notice is that comments are blocked; but I wanted to include it so that those of you fighting the battle with close-minded Administrators or extreme firewalls might take heart. This is an example of a class portal in it's infancy, but it still has some great attributes. It's easy to see that it is designed to keep parents informed of events and it does this very well. It can be easily tracked through a parents email or by using an RSS feed. And her [|blogroll]offers access to elementary standards such as AR Book Find and Spelling City. Comparing this to Room 231 is like comparing apples and oranges, they are both Class Portals but they are totally different in their scope and connectivity.

By looking at these two examples it's easy to see that Class Portals can be as elaborate or as basic as their designer and host want them to be.

Much like the class portal, [|online filing cabinets]and [|e-portfolios] are providing unique ways for students to save and archive their blog activity. They are great web tools that provide the opportunity for students to post,store and view their work in one convenient place. Online filing cabinets provides students (and teachers) with the advantage of keeping track of weblogs that may include homework, projects, and feedback received from teachers or peers. E-Portfolios allow students to collect and publish specific work that best represents their individual learning.
 * Online Filing Cabiniet and E-Portfolio **

__**EXAMPLES:**__
 * [|Helen Barrett] has done extensive research in the development of electronic portfolios. She is well known for sharing her work of incorporating educational blogging using [|Web 2.0] tools. Using a variety of websites, such as [|GoogleDocs], [|Wordpress.com], and Wikispaces.com, she shares samples and instructions for e-portfolio use and creation.


 * [|Digital Filing Cabinet / Secondary School History] describes the benefits of teachers and students using online file cabinets to store material using examples from a History course.

**Collaborative Space** ​ [|Collaborative learning] is huge part of classrooms today, so it is only natural that use of tools on the internet should be utilized to encourage the process of learning together. Collaborative blogging allows a group of students to work together on a classroom project. Together students dialog, explore, and reflect about any topic assigned, taking the instruction from the teacher and placing it in their own hands. The blog becomes the forum to bring new information to your peers, to digest that information, and finally to consider what it means.


 * __SOME TIPS ON USING BLOGS FOR COLLABORATIVE LEARNING:__**
 * Tammy Worchester offers teachers series of tips for creating a collaborative blog in the classroom. At this very informative website, Mrs. Worchester goest step by step of setting up a Blogger account and also examines the many benefits of using Blogger, including a students ability to just email a blog entry in.
 * Eighth grade English teacher, Jessie Thaler, offers advice on having students contribute and work together on a blog space at Edutopia.


 * __EXAMPLES:__**
 * Student Reflections on Elie Weisel's NIGHT-- Students in Battle Creek, Michigan respond to blog posts about Elie Weisel's Holocaust memoir, NIGHT. While they do not write actual blog entries, students at Lakeview High School, and around the world, are invited to post comments in a collaborative exercise of discussion themes and issues within this powerful novel about the Holocaust.
 * Cross Cultural Rhetoric- While a bit more complex and ambitious in nature, Stanford University in California and Orebro University in Sweden paired students up to work together on looking at various popular culture icons, such as MTV, recoridng artists, and commercials. Student presented a topic with comments that presented the differences between Swedish perspective and American.
 * The Alice Project--10th Grade Honors English students tackle themes, characters, and plot twists in Lewis Carrol's masterpieces ALICE IN WONDERLAND. In groups, students create a blog space that covers topics of their own choice but span and include the contents of the entire novel.

**School Website** As a formal website designer I understand the important of keeping a website updated. The desire of any website owner is to keep everything updated and well organized. Now, for the school that has a website, their site will constantly need updating and it can be a huge task for any one Webmaster.

Will Richardson’s 2nd edition book, “[|Blogs Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms] ,” spells out a new option for websites in schools. The new tool call [|Weblog] is now the cure for any lag in maintaining an updated website. Some current website examples:
 * []
 * [|www.lewiselementary.org]

Will Richardson’s book and I both recommend that there needs to be an administrator for the weblog. It is a great idea for a school to have a site that everyone can blog but it is also a great idea for each blog to be properly monitored, approved or disapproved by a monitor. This should not discourage any user of the site but when a user has access to post updates to a site anywhere at anytime, the creative collaborations are endless.