Why begin blogging in your class?

This Thursday, I will be running a Brekkie with a techie session at Launceston College. I have been asked to do this by Kent Poulton, my previous boss. It is to be a basic introduction to blogging with mainly primary school teachers. It is being held from 7.30am-8.30am before school starts. I have also invited Linda Bonde from Riverside Primary to come and talk about her blog.

What do I think is important to know before starting to blog with your class?

What is a blog?

How do other teachers use their class blog?

How can you introduce it to your class?

How does it work within the curriculum?

What is a blog? How do other teachers use their class blog?

Share information and class news with parents, family and caregivers.

Provide students with a way to access assignments, homework, resources and information about their class online.

For global collaboration and authentic audience.

To inspire and motivate students.

Check out these blogs from Tasmanian schools:

Blogs from overseas (teachers blogging for a long time)

Mrs Yollis from USA – blogging with grade 3 class since 2008 – does lots of global collaborations

Merry Beau from Ireland grades 1-6

Mr Webb from New Zealand – older grades

St Peters at Bray in Ireland grades 1-6

Mrs Smith from Canada grades 6/7 – students have their own blogs on the sidebar

Mrs Hembree – great book trailers and using library with blog

Miss Jordan – grade 3/4 in Australia

Open the door to B4 – New Zealand – check out the literacy and numeracy links

How can you introduce blogging to your class?

Show them the video above and use the student activity sheet linked here.

Create a display board related to blogging.

Do paper blogging with your students, put results on the display board for classroom visitors and other teachers, parents to see.

How does blogging work within the curriculum?

I have started creating posts relating blogging to the Australian curriculum but here is a quick list of possible ways:

value of strong passwords

privacy settings

multimodal reading and writing

digital safety

being a good digital citizen

embedding English genres for reading and writing

questioning skills

creating graphs, surveys, polls

creative commons images

using advanced safe searches online

chance for everyone to have their opinion heard

A blog works best when it is part of the daily classroom life rather than an extra add on.

Source: Why begin blogging in your class?