New Info For Parents
The Potentials for Blogging
Technorati Blogosphere Update
- 133 million blogs
- 1 million posts a day
- 63% of respondents say that blogging has led them to become more involved with things they’re passionate about as a result of blogging.
- Respondents report that blogging has had chiefly positive impacts on their personal lives; just 6% say that relationships with friends or family members have suffered as a result of blogging.
My blog is at Weblogg-ed
- Over 3,700 posts
- About 1.1 million words
- Over 15,000 comments
Benefits:
- Motivation
- Writing Skills
- Reading Skills
- Collaboration
- Network Building
- Community Building
Anne Davis’ “Rationale for Blogging”
Reading Blogs
Find bloggers that share your passion!
- Support Blogging has a GREAT list of teacher, administrator and classroom blogs.
- Google Blog Search
- Google Reader
- Edublog Awards
Blogging Platforms
- Blogger
- Edublogs
- Blogmeister
- 21Classes
- Also, check out Anne Davis’ “Blogging: It’s Elementary” a great Webquest to get started.
Blogging the Verb
- Posting assignments. (Not blogging)
- Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
- Posting links (Not blogging)
- Links with descriptive annotation, i.e. “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description.)
- Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging.)
- Reflective, meta-cognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere.)
- Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. (Real blogging)
- Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments. (Complex blogging)
Blogging in Professional Practice
- Chris Lehmann (High school administrator from Philadelphia.)
- Dean Shareski (Learning consultant from Canada. See his post on student and teacher blogging.)
- danah boyd (Harvard fellow and researcher on all things kids and social networking related.)
- Dan Meyer (Math teacher in California.)
- Joyce Valenza (Pa. librarian blog.)
- Clarence Fisher (Classroom teacher in Canada.)
- Karl Fisch (Technology Integrator in Colorado)
- Tom Barrett (Classroom teacher in UK)
Blogging in Classrooms
- Many Voices for Darfur (A one post project blog.)
- Secret Life of Bees (Literature blog that features the author.)
- Guerilla Season (Literature blog that features the author.)
- Civil War Sallie
- Extreme Biology (Science classroom blog using and interesting theme.)
- Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog
- Science Leadership Academy Blogs
- Two Writing Teachers
- Konrad Glogowski “How to Grow a Blog“
- An interesting post and comments from Tom Barrett.
- Look for the Student Blogging Challenge from Edublogs as well. (This is a great post to help set up your blog.)
Policy and Pedagogy
Blog Bling
- ClustrMap
- Google Analytics
- Ping-O-Matic
- MixMap
- 50 Great Widgets for your Blog
- Adding Polls to your Blog
- PollDaddy
- Vizu
The Future of Blogs
- More interactive
- Widgets and Plugins
- Convergence
- Drupal
- Moodle
- Elgg (SLA Student Site)
- Multimedia
- Podomatic
- YouTube