Week 2: Blogging

Now that the semester is settling in a bit, we will have a more typical week in terms of what you need to accomplish. You can view the agenda below. If you have any questions this week, let's practice using the commenting function of blogs. It will allow each of us to benefit from others' questions or comments. If need be, you can always email me as well. Please have the work for this week completed by midnight on Saturday, January 19th. Best of luck, and let me know what I can do to help.

Cheers, Joe

For the week of January 14th, you should:

1. Watch the VoiceThread about blogging so that you can get a brief introduction to blogs and blogging.

2. Please complete the following readings. Each is quite short, and I've tried to focus them around how some teachers are using blogs in the classroom:

Ferdig, R. E., & Trammell, K. D. (2004). Content delivery in the 'blogosphere.' T.H.E. Journal, 31(7), 12, 16-17, 20. link

Echlin, H. (2007, January 7). Digital discussion: Take your class to the Internet. Edutopia. Retrieved January 13, 2007, from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-discussion-take-your-class-to-internet.

Colombo, M. W., & Colombo, P. D. (2007). Blogging to improve instruction in differentiated science classrooms. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(1), 60-63. link

Lesesne, T. S. (2006). Technology meets literature: Meeting authors through their blogs. Teacher Librarian, 33(5), 58-59. link

Ishuzuka, K. (2006). History teacher 2.0. School Library Journal, 52(4), 26-27. link

Richardson, W. & Mancabelli, R. (2007). High-tech inspires the read/write website. The Education Digest, 72(9), 14-18. link

3. Decide which service you would like to use for your blog. Two that I might recommend are Blogger and Edublogs, though you could even use a blog that you already have provided that is more tailored to your professional identity. In past courses, most students have chosen Blogger and have had good success with them, but you should read over the Terms of Service for each to make sure you are comfortable with them.

4). Set up your blog account. As part of this process please create an about page or update your profile to briefly talk about yourself and how you are going to use this blog. Keep in mind that the goal is to use this blog professionally, so if you have to create a new account, make sure you have a url and title you won't mind referring students and parents to.

5. Since we will be creating podcasts later in the semester, "burn your feed" with Feedburner. Here is a quick 2 minute video I created using Jing to show you how to do it.

6. Update your blog link on our Wiki Gallery. Here's a quick clip on how to do this.

7. Locate two examples of teachers using blogs in ways you find interesting. You might try using a blog search engine such as Technorati or Google Blog Search. You can also find a list of educational blogs here. There are different categories there, so be sure to scroll through the entire page.

8. Create a post on your blog in which you a) devote at least one paragraph to each of the blogs you liked best (# 7 above) and tell us what it was about them that you liked. Be sure to create an embedded link back to each blog so we can see the blogs you are referring to--hint, the links in this post are embedded links because they do not display the url address, and b) capture some of your current ideas on how you might be able to use a blog in your teaching both as a classroom management tool and for student learning. Please try to tailor these ideas to the grade levels and subject areas you are most interested in teaching.

Finally, when you create the post, also think about what tag or label to use for your organization.