Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Tools for Classrooms is an excellent guide to using blogs and other web tools in the classroom. Click to below to check it out.
Resources to Get You Started
- Blog Planning Sheet - A table that will help you decide the purpose of your blog.
- Blog Uses - Tons of ways to use blogs to communicate and enhance student learning.
- Scribe Post for Younger Students - A high school teacher's idea made a little simpler for younger kids.
- Blog Safety Information - The message I posted on my classroom blog. Written for parents.
- Writing Prompts - 59 writing prompts for math teachers.
- 21Publish Directions - Directions for getting started with 21Publish. May be outdated.
- Digital Images Uses - 38 uses for digital cameras in the mathematics classroom.
Lesson Plans That Incorporate Blogs
Classroom Blogs
- Verity 7th Grade Math (featured in Will Richardson's book!) - My first classroom blog.
- WMS Grade 6 - My classroom blog from last year.
- WMS5 - My classroom blog from this year.
- The Probability Project - A lesson that incorporated blogs and digital photos.
Past Presentations
Free Blog Hosting Sites
These sites allow you to create and modify your own blog. The setup is painless and takes just a few minutes. No technical knowledge is needed.
- Blogger - [http://www.blogger.com/] - This free site will give your own sub domain name as well as allow you to choose a template for the layout of the blog. Good for teachers who just want to give blogging a a try before starting with their classes.
- 21Publish - [http://www.21Publish.com/] - Bar none the best blog host for schools that I've come across. It's the one I use for my classroom blog because it allows teachers to set up a blogging community and make it totally secure: no one can join the community unless approved and all entries and comments can be regulated. 21Publish is full-featured, meaning users can post images, audio, video, links, and even documents.
- edublogs.org -[http://edublogs.org] - Another free site, however this is created just for those of us in education. Haven't tried it, so can't comment on it.
Teacher Blogs You Must Be Reading
- misterteacher.com - [http://misterteacher.blogspot.com] - My blog.
- Weblogg-ed - [http://www.weblogg-ed.com] - This site, maintained by a high school Supervisor of Instructional Technology, is dedicated to "discussions and reflections" on the use of Web logs and other technologies in the classroom. Lots of great resources here!
- A Difference - [http://adifference.blogspot.com] - "We sometimes feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."
- Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech - [http://ideasandthoughts.org] - As an educational technologist, I am exploring ways to make learning more relevant, engaging and authentic.
- Education/Technology - [http://tim.lauer.name] - An elementary school principal on the cutting edge.
More Links
- Firefox is a blog-friendly browser. A new technology in Firefox called Live Bookmarks lets you view RSS news and blog headlines in the bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks menu. For instance, with one glance, I can quickly see the latest headlines from all the sites in my blogroll below. I can go directly to the articles that interest me—saving me time.
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MyBlogroll - A blogroll is a list of all the blogs that a person has subscribed to. Each day, when these blogs are updated, the subscriber gets a notice that the blog has a new entry, or entries. I subscribe to blog feeds through a service called Bloglines. Bloglines is:
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"...a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install."
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"Bloglines allows you to search for, read and share any updates from your favorite news feed or blog regardless of its authoring technology."
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Last, but not least, Bloglines allows you to create your own blogrolls and "...become a publisher, sharing your thoughts and opinions!"
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Learn even more:
Continue reading about blogs:
Classroom Blogs allow teachers to assess and enrich classroom learning.
Student blogs allow students to create amazing multimedia projects and to communicate and dialogue with another.
Writing with blogs in the mathematics classroom allows students to record their learning in a digital format.
Digital portfolios allow students to demonstrate growth in an electronic format.
Resources for Blogging in the Classroom - Books, links, and even more links.