Blog on

I've followed a variety of personal and professional blogs for a few years. There are other blogs I've visited and never gone back. I think that at this point I'm ready to create a professional blog for my students to access. Hopefully by the end of this course I'll have come up with some great ideas for blogging with some of my students. One of the issues is that I work in a class setting with elementary students. So far most of my ideas would work better with middle to high school students.

The greatest challenge I see in using blogs with students is the fear that school boards and administrators have of students writing and publishing on the web. However this can be addressed by having the blog set to be private and previewing all posts. Some principals do not trust their teachers to be appropriate in the reviews, thus blocking the use of blogs and other web 2.0 tools.

I'd like to start a blog of book reviews, book talks, and book trailers to entice students to read some new titles. I'd like to have students post comments. Eventually I would like to have students post their reviews etc. This would address NETS_S Standard 2, Communication and Collaboration. Working with blogs would also address Standard 5, Digital Citizenship.