Blogging

media type="custom" key="784897" toc =Blogging Overview=

A Web Log or Blog is often described as an online journal where an author can share thoughts, opinions, ideas and information about a wide range of topics. In addition, blog topics are usually made available for commenting meaning that readers can //respond// to comments with their own thoughts, opinions, ideas and information. People can subscribe to different blogs so that they receive regular updates when new posts are added, which saves them the time of constantly having to check back to see if there is anything new to read.

**Uses of Blogging in Education**
Blogs can provide students with an opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas with a broader audience. Teachers can post questions or topics that focus on different parts of the curriculum and then have students respond as a way to facilitate an online discussion. Blogs can also be used to solicit student reflections on different experiences or areas of study or to allow students to post their own writing in order to get feedback and promote collaboration. A blog can also be a great source of information for parents and students when the teacher uses it to post regular updates pertaining to a particular class.

Educational Benefits of Blogging
One benefit of a blog is that it can provide an avenue for students to share their writing, thoughts, ideas, opinions and reflections with a broader audience. This opens the door to more collaborative learning but also creates a need for greater security to protect students from unwanted or inappropriate comments being posted on a blog. A blog can also be used to extend the discussion of various topics beyond the boundaries of the physical classroom where outside content experts can be invited to join the discussion. Teachers can use blogs to review material and create a permanent artifact that students can refer back to as needed. These are just some of the benefits of using blogs in education.

Specific Ideas for using Blogging in a k-12 Setting
Click here to add or view a lesson plan or idea for using this technology in the classroom.
 * [|Blogs by Teachers] provides a listing of numerous blogs that were created by teachers for many different purposes.
 * [|Roos Science Blog] shows how one teacher keeps students and parents informed by using a blog to recap different concepts and activities covered in class.
 * [|The Van Horne News] is another good example of how a teacher is using a blog to communicate with parents.
 * [|The English Honors 3 Blog] is a blog used to facilitate different assignments and provide resources to students.

Relevant Online Tools

 * [|Edublogs]is one of the many blogging tools that is intended for use in an educational setting. It is fairly straightforward but has been subject to reliability issues in the past.
 * [|Blogger]is the blogging tool from Google. This tool lacks some of the functionality of [|Edublogs] but it does make it easy to create a blog quickly and with little technical skill.
 * [|Weebly] allows you to create a free blog along with the class homepage you create through Weebly. The nice thing about using Weebly for both your blog and website is that you can seemlessly integrate the two and edit/modify them through the same interface.
 * [|MyBlogSite] is yet another free blogging service.
 * [|BlogEasy] is (you guessed it) a free blogging service.
 * [|eBloggy] is (surprise surprise) a free blogging service.
 * [|bloglines]allows you to track feeds from a variety of different blogs and news sources so that you can keep track of all the sources you are monitoring from one location. There are many other resources that provide this same service.
 * Twitter is the popular microblogging tool that allows you to post updates in 140 characters or less.

Blogging "Ad-on" Tools

 * [|Apture] allows you to enhance your blog postings but adding multiple links to different keywords, ideas, resources and concepts in your posts. You can link to video, websites, documents and images. The one downside is that you are restricted to 60 links per blog, which means you may run out of links quickly.
 * [|SnapShots] is similar to [|Apture] but it works automatically with any link you put on your blog posting. Readers will see a pop-up preview of the website, which gives them a better idea of what they will find if they click on the link.
 * Riffly is a plug-in that you can add to your blog to allow users to leave audio and video comments rather than just typing. Currently, this only works with the Wordpress blogging platform.

**Relevant Articles or other Readings**

 * [|Interesting article about kids and blogging]

**Other Relevant Sources of Information (Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Discussion Forums etc.)**
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