Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Education & Blogging

* A post I created for my course I am enrolled in at the moment = Perhaps some students in the class came and checked it out.  I promised them a picture of me in the class = This is an oldie. 


Blogs can be a useful tool for students and staff within a school.  The single most important aspect of it is being read (visited) by other people.  Secondly the content has to be decent to ensure returning visitors.  But these two things go hand in hand.  If the blog is visited by people who need to find information then it is a success.  I started a personal travel and adventure blog last September because I am on sabbatical this year, and I wanted to keep people posted about my whereabouts and activities.  It has been a huge success with nearly 4,000 views since September 2010.  Now it isn't an educational blog per se, (although I posted my comic and people thought it was hillarious), but I do have one started that I can adapt when I have to go back to work in September and perhap it will morph into that for a while. 

There are many ways a blog coud be used with students in a classroom:
  • To post a monthly newsletter or calendar
  • To post important upcoming dates, events, quizzes, field trips (still calendar stuff I suppose)
  • To list homework (daily or weekly)
  • To inform about expectations in the curriculum
  • To highlight key successes in the class
  • To inform students about school or board news and issues
  • To put web site links to curriculum expectations
* I would never ever:
  • post a picture of a student in the class on a blog
  • post test results of students in the class on a blog
  • write an ancedotal comment about a particular student on a blog
As far as using a blog with staff members in a school, many of the same things come to mind that I listed already.  However I would add:
  • To post a school's mission statement and various policies (computer for example)
  • To list or inform teachers about federation issues or collective bargening things
  • To post the minutes of staff or division meetings for others to read if they were absent
  • You can create a survey on a blog and staff could respond to a questionaire about a particular topic

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