BP2_2010060410_EduUses4Blogs

There are many obvious benefits from using Blogs in the classroom. First and foremost it is an easy means to get out class instructions and provide your class with links relevant to the content you are studying. Blogs also give the students a way to talk about their learning with one another or with another class. Blogs can help your struggling users who now have a means for posting questions they are having and getting peers to answer and give them advice. Another excellent idea I ran across was using a Blog as a way to communicate with another class across the city or around the world. I am fairly new to Blogs. I have just started using Blogs on a professional level. Recently I became a member of the Math collaborative for our district and Blogging is the main way we communicate ideas and answer questions. It has been not only a pleasant experience but one in that we can be open and share more easily.I see tremendous potential for this medium for my classroom. For my AR project I am going to be building a website for my students to give them another resource for learning their math concepts and am now going to make sure that a blog is a central part of this website. In doing the research on this topic, I ran across a Blog by Stephen Downes at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/04/blogs-in-education.html. In his Blog he lists the steps you should take in order to successfully incorporate Blogs into a classroom setting. His suggestions include staring out slowly and simply by using Blogs to post class instruction to get the students use to checking blogs regularly for information. Making sure to be a good model of how to use blogs by creating and using your own Blog as a teacher. Have students read other blogs before posing to their own as well as making sure the students have a context with which to write are also encouraged. One thing he mentioned that will be of outmost concern to me in my school setting will be watching out for any type of bullying that may occur with this sort of communication medium. I will definitely have to have a plan in place for what and what is not acceptable and consequences for inappropriate posts.