Give Blogging a Try

Several years ago I did a presentation for the technology support group in my school district on how to create a personal blog using Google's Blogger. Many of us were excited on how this tool could be used in education and wanted to get it into teacher's hands. On that same day, the district coordinators passed out a book, The World is Flat, to use as a discussion starter at our monthly meetings for the rest of the year. Since we were learning about Blogs, I volunteered to create one where we could share our thoughts on the book in between our meetings. It was a success in that everyone had a chance to post and comment on a working blog. It was a worthwhile experience and I learned a lot as the moderator.

Blogging never seemed to catch on in our district after that initial push. I have been told by teachers that they thought it was a "good idea, but":

"Its too hard."

"I don't know how to do it"

"Seems like it will take too much time."

I think it is a valuable tool and want to offer a few resources today that may encourage you to explore it's use in your classroom.

First, there are many possibilities available to you in creating a blog. I like and use Blogger because it is easy to setup and maintain. There are other options though and here is a partial listing of some of the blogging programs available. My district started using Gaggle this year for student email and if you have access to that program, it has a new blogging feature.

Second, I wanted to gather some sites together with suggestions on what to do with your blog once you have it up and running.

• Edublog has an article on "10 Ways to Use Your Edublog"
• Distributed Teaching and Learning. Nice explanation of the idea of "scribe posts". Daily class notes that are posted each day by the students.
  
• “Let’s see if I can start a log…” Long post by Will Richardson who writes about his experience setting up classroom blogs since 2001.
• Blogging 101: Web Logs go to school: Article on CNET about blogging in education.
• Anne Davis, from Georgia Stage University, writes about Rationale for Educational Blogging. She is one of this year's presenters at K12 Online Conference and will be giving a related presentation: Learn to Blog: Blog to Learn.
  

Third, here is a sampling of classroom blogs I found online.

• Room 9's Writing Spot: (Primary)
  
• Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog: (Primary)
  
• Critical Issues in Literature Block 3: (High school)
• Web Pages and Portfolios: (High school)
  

I'm not the first to promote blogging to teachers and there is a plethora of information on the internet. I gathered and reviewed all this information in an evenings time. Every time I go back to the web to check something out for this post, I find another item I want to include. For example, I found this site that lists resources and examples for potential bloggers.

Pick a program. Start small. Give it a try.

[image:© Radu Razvan - Fotolia.com]