Blogging+EDT+650

= Blogging Assignment How to: Start a Place-Based Blog = = = This article is a great what to do before you start blogging with your class! It gives several different steps and etiquette that you would need to discuss with your students before you get started. =Blogging is History: Taking Classroom Discussions Online= What a great way to make history fun and meaningful! An 8th grade teacher set up a blog and posted pod casts to go along with a book his classes were reading. Not only were the students in the class involved, the teacher contacted the author of the book and classes from other states to join in. Each week discussion questions were posted. Students responded to those questions as well as posted other questions and their thoughts. The author did a weekly pod cast answering the student’s questions. For only the coast of a microphone the teacher was able to create a fun and meaningful learning experience for his students in both history and technology. The article ended with a quote from the classroom teacher that says a lot about today’s kids, "People think that kids today somehow grow up magically knowing how to use new technologies. They don't. The difference with this generation is that if students don't know how to use a technology, they aren't afraid of learning." =How to Use Social-Networking Teaching for Learning This article shared may ways and reasons why social networking or as the article referred to it as academic networking should be allowed in schools. The article goes on to say schools have done a god job of preparing students to orally present information however, our world is changing and now students need to be able to communicate using computers and other technologies. The article finished by saying in order for this change to take place administrators need to see the importance and give teachers the time to explore and create! With this allowance from administration would help us move to 2.0 schools rather than just having a few 2.0 classrooms! = =Technology Tools to get Teachers Started= = This article is fabulous!! It is exactly what I was looking for…in fact; I wish I would have found this one first! It is technology in the classroom for dummies! This article gave definitions of several different technologies (web 2.0, RSS, Listservs, Social-Networking Web Sites, Twitter, Wikis, Blogs) in a language that anyone can understand. It also gave several recourses to answer any further questions you may have. Along with that information the article gave suggestions on how to start using technologies in the classroom and what to avoid. This article helped me understand better what the differences between all of the technologies were and what they are used for. I felt much more “informed” after reading this article! = =Digital Discussion: Take Your Class to the Internet= Anyone thinking of using a blog in their classroom should read this article! This article gives several ideas of what a blog could be used for in the classroom (classroom management, learning journal, online notebook, class discussion, personal expression) as well as how to us it. It also gives some basic but important information to keep in mind when starting a blog. =Link to my blog=

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