First week of a new class...Facilitating Collaboration using Web Tools. This class looks to get more in depth about using Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts in an educational setting. This first week we specifically explored Blogging. We were asked to read the first 3 chapters of our book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" by Will Richardson. The first chapter was an eye opener for several reasons...mostly from the perspective of how much blogs are used in society already and how powerful their impact has been. It provided lots of evidence of how blogs have infiltrated politics, journalism, and business. I took notes to use when I talk to my staff about incorporating blogging into their classrooms. The second chapter full of examples of the role that blogs can play in education. Again, a good way for me to justify my teachers using them as part of their classroom assignments. The third chapter brought to my attention the strategy of "starting small". I have always perceived setting up blogging with the students as a daunting task because of trying to create individual accounts, giving students email addresses, and then trying to administer and censor the blogs. The book suggested starting by explaining blogging and its advantages and then modeling appropriate responses. When students seem to grasp that the book suggests starting with a classroom blog. I thought that was a great idea because it is an excellent warm-up for students and it doesn't require very much micro-management on the teacher's part.
The other assignment we had was to review several blogging creation sites and provide a write-up of our thoughts. I reviewed Edmodo, WordPress, and Blogger. Edmodo wasn't really a blogging site but I still enjoyed looking at it closer. It is essentially a student management system but I liked that you could open some communication lines with their built in message board a la Facebook. I already use a comment section on my Google Site that I use for my classroom website so I can accomplish that communication without making students log in to a SMS. I liked how Edmodo allowed you to connect to other teachers and there were a few cool features like creating badges for assignments. WordPress and Blogger are both great blogging creation sites that are easy to use for beginners and feature some advanced options to satisfy expert bloggers. I think I'll probably try WordPress when we introduce blogging to our middle school students since I don't have to deal with students having Google accounts. My middle school students have email addresses through Gaggle.net but not Google accounts...yet.
I too liked the idea of starting small, slow and easy. My teachers have so many things to learn about everything that I don't know where or how to start with them when I eventually get the time. I wish I had a class of my own so I could start trying this.
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