BP1_2009111_BloggingforEDU

There is certainly much talk in the education arenas today about blogging and whether it truly has a place in the classroom. I have noticed that many teachers, mostly the ones between 23 and about 32 years old, have created blog spots for themselves and their students. My third grade daughter came home a couple of weeks ago with a letter stating that her class now has a site for blogging and that all the students in her class would be creating blogs weekly. The teacher is encouraging parents to read the blogs and make comments. My daughter, Sara, was adamant that I go online and read her blog. As a teacher myself, I have a classroom website that I blog on. I have been saying that I was going to create a student blog site for a few weeks now, but just have not had the time to set it all up. Now that I have been on my daughter's classroom blogging site, I am even more anxious to get going (I have ninth graders). I can see many advantages to blogging by teachers and students. Teachers can post materials and resources; share lesson plans; integrate multi-media; and of course, get the students writing and discussing. One blogging site that I think I am going to sign up at is Edublogs. From what I have read thus far, it seems like a fantastic site for teachers, parents, and students. I did a little research on some other blogging sites and support for educational uses. At Edublogs there are probably thousands of educational blogs. I browsed through many of the blog posts, especially the ones on technology or high school topics. I was amazed at how informative the blogs were. I read somewhere that blogging encourages reading, thinking, drawing conclusions, and simply brain processing power! I thought that those things alone are reasons enough to have students blog. As one blogger wrote, "Not everyone has the opportunity to publish a paper or a book, but everyone can blog." I am going to try hard to get my classroom blog going by week's end.