Thing 3

How might you use a blog with students? How might they respond to a blog assignment? What concerns about blogging with students do you have? How might you use a blog for other educational purposes (other than with students)?

I teach English and I intend to use my blog to have students chat about books. Somethimes they'll chat about books they've chosen to read independently. They can share their reflections and recommend books and authors to one another. Other times they'll comment on specific questions about readings we're doing in common. I'm not sure exactly how I'll do this because I'm just learning, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it as I continue with this program.

I am concerned that the students write appropriate posts. I can see from the video that I can get an alert when a post is made and I can view the post before it is added for the public to see. That seems like a good idea to prevent undesirable messages.

I can see using a blog with other people in my department to share ideas and techniques pertaining to classes we teach. I could also see a blog as useful between teachers of different departments for communicating about students that we share. This would be sort of like a "team" approach that I used to experience when I was in the middle school. We also have a faculty book club at my high school. We sometimes have a tough time getting a date to meet that's good for everyone. We could maintain a blog and have our discussions on line, or at least communicate our ideas from a meeting with those who could not attend and read their comments even though they're not at the meeting. Our book club is in the year-long process of promoting the reading of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. A blog would allow staff to share ideas about how they're promoting the book in their discipline.

I'm eager to see what else this course has to offer, but right now, blogging seems like a great place for me to start using some of what Web 2.0 has to offer to educators.