Blogging resources for teachers

One of the challenges that I have come across was that very few teachers at my school blogged.  I wanted to encourage more teachers to start so I thought I would find some interesting sites and readings that discussed how teachers and educators just like them, have dealt with blogging, in a hope that it would allow for a clearer understanding of how important it is, regardless of what subject they taught.

1.  Tips for choosing a class blog: Wesley Fryer

I like the image that is shared on this site.  It has all the components that we dream of providing our students when it comes to their learning.  Fryer analyses 6 different blogging domains that staff could find use dependant on their context and highlights the features of each of the domains that could be useful in a classroom.  

2.  Teaching with blogs strategy guide (Tracey Gardner)

This is a really helpful guide which describes the processes involved in composing blogs in the classroom, the process of writing regular posts that are published online and a step by step guide on the ins and outs of blogging for an educator.

3.  Blogging in the classroom: why your students should write online (Michael Drennan)  

This write up discusses Micheal Drennan's observation of a classroom whose main teaching and learning is centred around using blogs to enrich their learning experiences.  He says that students realise how high the bar of public domain writing is and raise the challenge levels themselves.  What he found was that student blogging was 'powerful, stimulating and enriching'. 

4.  Blogging in the 21st century classroom (Michelle Lampinen) 

This blog is from a teacher who struggled to get her students to write effectively.  She introduced blogging to her junior class and found that they were motivated to write when they had an authentic audience.  She felt their writing had made a marked improvement and surveyed her students to find out their thoughts on blogging.  What I like about this blog is that she also shares the trials and honest thoughts of students who didn't enjoy blogging which has allowed for more reflection and a need to look at other means to help them write better.  One aspect that Michelle did reflect on was something that I have learnt from research that explores the notion of an integrated curriculum - that we should 'encourage students to blog about topics from other classes as it helps them to see connections among subjects and realise that writing is a worthwhile skill in any field'.  

When connecting these readings, I found that they have shared common experiences around the importance of blogging within the classroom context, teachers need to allow students the opportunity to blog and that blogging allows for the transfer of skills across a students learning journey, both in and outside of the classroom.