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Using Blogs in Education Visit my blog: http://www.wornickjds.org/tech/blog.htmlWhat is a blog? A blog (short for weBLOG) is web-based journal or diary. A blogger (someone who writes a blog) posts entries to the blog through a web interface or through email sent to the blogging engine, which in turn posts the entry to the blog immediately. Since a blog is web based, it is written in HTML and can include text formatting, links, and images. Setting up a blog and using a blogging engine is free. In order to setup a blog, either hosted on their site or on your own (using FTP), visit one of the following websites: Blogs in Education In recent years, blogs have been used for a variety of reasons: news, opinion, and personal posts. Well, in education we can take them to a new level. Blogs can be used as education tools for newsletters, assignment depots, and online homework tools. With this free technology, educators are able communicate with parents, students, and community members via the web without the overhead of web authoring using the email to blogger option found in most blogging engines. Even more so, educators can email posts directly to parents, students, or community members and cc it to the blog at the same time, thereby creating a classroom news or curriculum depot available online 24/7/365. Activities and Accomplishments in the Classroom Using blogs, educators can create an online resource for activities that have happened or while happen in class. For example, an educator could post a simple newsletter to his/her blog outlining what was covered in class, highlights of the week, and a preview of what’s to come including important information. With this, parents or community members can review classroom news and information and retrieve information from past newsletters sent home. This also provides prospective parents or parents of students coming into that teacher’s classroom a view into what will happen in the classroom over the course of the year. Assignment Depots Blogs can also be used as depots of homework assignments. Students are given the assignments in class and are required to record those assignments, but some will lose or forget what needs to be done. By using a blog, educators can post assignments and due dates with minimal effort writing a simple email to the blog at the end of the day. With assignments online, students have depot for current and past assignments, which provides access at home and thereby reduces excuses for missing homework. Additionally, prospective parents can visit the blog to see what topics are covered by what homework assignments have been assigned. This is a less formal and more authentic view into classroom activities than a sample curriculum handout. One of the most exciting ways to use blogs in an educational realm is by literally assigning, receiving, and monitoring homework on the blog. An educator can assign homework to students where they visit a website, complete a task on that site, and attain a result. The educator clearly defines the steps on a blog post and provides a link to the site. The students then visit that site, complete the task, and then post their results back to the blog in the form of a comment to the post. This results in the students’ work done completely online (time stamped to make sure it is done on time). Additionally, other students can collaborate by viewing each other’s work. All of this can be done with one email from the educator to the blog. Using blogs in education has vast benefits, including, but not limited to, enhanced communication, record keeping, and curriculum differentiation. Additionally, blogs further the goal of moving schools away from wasting paper, thereby conserving resources and becoming fiscally responsible. Using blogs help us in these endeavors as well as being a wonderful (and backed up) resource for teachers, students, and parents with little to no overhead.
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