Classroom Blog

As I mentioned prior, blogging within the classroom can be an effective tool. While teachers can use it to communicate with both their colleagues and even parents of their students, blogging is also a great tool to fascilitate learning. Whether one focuses on elementary students or even up through high school, there are many different blogs that are used on a daily basis.

Elementary Blog...

Erving 1st Grade Blog
http://ervingfirst.blogspot.com/

Purpose: Erving 1st Grade Blog is a setup by 1st grade teacher Benjamin Rubin, from Erving, Massachusetts. With this blog, he posts his students assignments and the work they complete; along with the progress they make as a classroom throughout the year.

Type of Posts: With this blog, Mr. Rubin provides the assignments he gives to his first graders accompanied by pictures that match the work. He then posts the work his students provide. In addition to this, his blog contains links to prior archives and an information page regarding Erving Elementary School.

Other Thoughts: This page is great to see how even children as young as 1st grade can have a blog implemented in their learning. Although most of the children are too young to access the blog themselves, their parents have the ability to check out their child's work and the students can see their answers to questions firsthand. Also, posting the children's work currently, in addition to prior material portrays the progress the young students are undergoing with their education. The beauty of this blog as well depicts the creativity of the students and just how much Mr. Rubin truly engages his student's learning.


Middle School Blog...

Middle School Math
http://classblogmeister.com/1.0/blog.php?blogger_id=21564

Purpose: Middle School Math is a 7th grade blog setup by math teacher Mrs. McMurray. This blog aims to inform students of their assignments and provide them with a location to submit their work. Also, it has a question and answer section for the students to ask Mrs. McMurray about their work.

Type of Posts: This math blog includes written assignments to the students and provides each student with their own individual link to submit their work. The blog has a section for related links dealing with the current work or assignments and includes both archives for teacher and student blog entries alike.

Other Thoughts: Using a blog for a math class is a very interesting spin on the usual curriculum. While most teachers provide students with numbers to crunch, a blog requires students to incorporate writing skills and learn to put their math abilities into written verbiage. While this is an effective way to use different skills in math, the blog is effective in that students have constant contact with the teacher even outside of class with the ability to ask questions and get feedback; that coupled with the fact that they have the same access to group work with their classmates makes for an effective way of using a blog with math students.


High School Blog...

The Eagles Roost
http://bransonsbookbagblog.blogspot.com/

Purpose: The Eagles Roost is a blog setup up by Brenda, a media specialist from North Carolina. In the blog she updates current events happening at the school such as book fairs, etc. and also adds insight to possible new books for students to read. It really works well to inform the students and keep them in the mix as far as the school library goes.

Type of Posts: This blog is great as it not only includes written stories and headlines about important information, it too includes videos for students to watch which are quite appealing to the eye. There are also areas for students to keep up with the library through Twitter while simply reading blog lists that either the media specialist or students can post on.

Other Thoughts: I think blogging for a media specialist, whether it's high school or elementary school is a great tool. This blog includes many aspects of learning that pertain to not only a media center, but every class students have in their daily schedule. There are links to books that students comment on in reference to whether or not they recommend them. There is also a great deal of information on effective navigation of the library for help with book reports and other school related work. Finally, this blog is tremendous in that it allows students from other schools to visit and provide their thoughts on good book material through a live traffic feed.