Thing #3 - Using Blogs at School

There are multitudes of ways and opportunities to use blogs within a school setting. Teachers can communicate with blog journals to reflect on a teaching unit to describe to other teacher's what was successful and what really didn't work too well; to share ideas for similar teaching activities; or to perhaps keep a log of teacher training or staff development activities that are common within your curriculum department.

You can set up class blogs to communicate important dates, deadlines, special events, project due dates, etc.; small student group work which would require communication between students; for students to voice comments about things they enjoy or don't enjoy about a particular activity or unit of study; to blog with other classes of similar interests whether in the same school bldg or even some other part of the country, or maybe even another country. Blogs can be used so that students can express their own ideas or opinions about subject content or class discussions.

Teachers can use blogs to communicate effectively with parents about assignments, projects, test scores or grade averages; to post pictures of class activities or to showcase student work such as poetry or art projects, writings done in class. I like the idea of creating a student newsletter using articles written by students with graphic art or pictures posted within the newsletter.

There seems to be unlimited uses for blogs within a school community. I think that with the technology that kids have at their fingertips today, blogging is a natural concept for them and they would love doing something like this!