Blogs

=Blogs in the classroom =

What is a "blog"? According to [|Technorati], a website that tracks over 112.8 million blogs, a blog is "a regularly updated journal published on the web. Some blogs are intended for a small audience; others vie for readership with national newspapers. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them." The difference between a blog, though, and a website is that blogs are interactive. The nature of a blog invites interaction between the author and her readers - the author posts thoughts, ideas, commentary, criticism, questions, links to other information; embeds video, audio, images, etc. The reader is called to read, think, reflect, and respond through the Comments section and/or their own blog posts. A dialog has begun.

What about blogs in the classroom? Here are a few ways you may consider using blogs with your students:
 * Create a blog for your class where students may post work for peer review and comments (talk to Denise Croker about her Creative Writing class blog where students provide constructive criticism of each others' work).
 * Create individual blogs for each student in the class to post to throughout the year (talk to Jackie Powers about her plans to have students blog about their summer reading and outside reading books next year).
 * Create a blog to engage students in discussion of specific topics covered in your curriculum. Open the blog to the public - students' work tends to improve when they know their audience has expanded to include the outside world.
 * Edublog's [|"10 ways to use your edublog to teach"] list
 * Feel free to add more ideas!

A host of publications exist that provide ideas for integrating blogs into the curriculum. For example, check out the May/June 2007 issue of //Multimedia & Internet@Schools// for an article called "Collaboration in Today's Classrooms: New Web Tools Change the Game," by Kelly Driscoll or Will Richardson's book __Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms__. Both may be found at the Ann Scott Carell Library.

If you want to set up a blog for yourself or your students, contact Melissa Wert for assistance OR visit [|Blogger] (part of the Google set of web tools) and [|follow these instructions] to walk yourself through the process setting up your own blog! [|Edublogs] is another free blogging platform worth mentioning.

Atomic Learning has a [|set of tutorials] called "Blogging Workshop" which will answer many questions you may have about setting up, customizing, posting to, editing, etc. your Blogger blog.

Check out these examples of blogs already created by Harpeth Hall students and faculty

 * Student Blogs:**
 * __Freshman and Sophomore blogs__**: Freshmen and sophomores created blogs as part of a Winterim course on web tools.







[|Diaries of a Book Junkie], a blog describing the day-to-day experiences of a publishing house intern. [|Winterim at Revolution Pictures], a blog written by an intern at a video production group.
 * __Junior and Senior blogs__**: Student interns created blogs to chronicle their experiences.

Other blogs: [|Library blog for parents] - Librarians post book reviews for parents.

Check out these blogs by educators
[|Blue Skunk Blog] by Doug Johnson [|Blogboard] by Teacher Magazine [|Learning Now] by Andy Carvin and PBS Teachers [|Weblogg-ed] by Will Richardson