Educator Blog

From an educational standpoint, blogging can be an extremely useful tool. Whether it is acting as a course syllabus, keeping parents informed on how their student is progressing, or allowing teachers to assemble their thoughts; blogging has become a widely used resource in today's classrooms.

As an educator, using different techniques to enhance student's learning is very important. With this in mind, using a blog to reach all different grade levels is important. One skill where this is apparent is in vocabulary. An effective tool for all students is as follows...

Learning Vocabulary can be Fun:
http://www.vocabulary.co.il/blog/

Purpose: Learning Vocabulary can be Fun is a blog aimed to point out successful ways to make learning enjoyable. With the topic of vocabulary, the blog provides examples of games and then why they are effective within the classroom.
Type of Posts: This post is designed using diagrams and examples of various games to be used when teaching the vocabulary. There is also a detailed walkthrough identifying the different grade levels and the activities that work the most effectively for them.
Other Thoughts: This blog is a great tool for all different grade levels when teaching vocabulary. Incorporating games for elementary age students immediately associates learning with enjoyment and fun activities. For middle schoolers, the games begin to get harder and actually require some problem solving and information recall. Lastly, the high schoolers can use opposition of words to really further their understanding of specific terms and it also helps prepare them for college level exams such as the SAT that are vocab heavy.


Another great educational use for Blogs is in Library Blogs. As this tool is made available by media specialists, the Blog can provide not only useful information about the library and the resources at hand, but also help the librarian to communicate with other teachers allowing the media center to be most effectively used in facilitating learning. Here are some examples,

Virtual Cheesecloth:
http://virtualcheesecloth.blogspot.com/

Purpose: This blog is ran by Amalia Connolly, a media specialist who uses her blog to facilitate her own learning with the ever changing world of technology. She really looks to emphasize how technology can be best suited to reach students from all different ages and abilities.

Type of Post: This post is designed using a collection of writeups, diagrams, and links. The diagrams are pictures relating information to the writeups Amalia presents while the links access technological information, educational standards, and various other learning material. She also provides a nice bit of detail on various conferences she's attended and the information she's gathered from well know figures within the media specialist world.

Other Thoughts: This is definitely an interesting blog but not for the resources it provideds to students. Instead it's quite interesting to see how technology is shaping the way in which experienced educators are approaching technological advancements. While Amalia has been a media specialist for a handful of years now, she is constantly looking to keep up with the changing times and find new insightful ways to expand her repetoire as a teacher. I found the most important part of her blog to be the section where she comments about a conference she attended on Ithaca's campus where the keynote speaker ended his talk by posing the question, "(how can we) help students to go beyond the basic questions and to continue the learning journey?" This in itself is what teaching is all about and one of the main reasons I hope to work with young people for a career.

Another blog I found to be interesting dealt with library blogging once again.

UNI Book Blog:
http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/library/

Purpose: This blog comes from University Laboratory High School in Illinois. This blog is kept by the media specialist and acts to inform the students of current events while also keeping them up to date on media technologies.

Type of Posts: This post is a website displaying the high school's library home page. From here, the students are able to post to a blog, search both catalogs and online databases for references that the school has rights to, and find out other important information for the library.

Other Thoughts: I think this is a tremendous tool to have for the library of any school. As I commented in Module one about the ways in which a library could use a wiki, I think blogging goes hand in hand. As you can see the media specialist has a link to her own blog where she not only tells a little about herself, but she also provides video imaging through media clips while also posting current events on her page. This is a great way to keep the students involved and up to date with school events. In addition, having the home page for the students to reference books and other materials is useful with blogging as like the Wiki, the students can provide feedback to the librarian about what worked well and what may need to be tweaked in the future.