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Blogging for Teachers (Part 2) - Blogs in Education

Objective:

Participants will understand best practices using blogs in education.

Exploration:

In part one you were introduced to the concept of a blog. However, you may still be wondering how blogs are being used in education. Several existing sites are devoted to this topic and can help you understand some of the best practices using blogs in education.

Blogs in Education - This page is designed to provide you some resources if you want to get started using blogs for yourself or with your students.

Weblogg-ed - This site is dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, and other Internet-related technologies in the K-12 classroom.

Matrix of some uses of blogs in education - This brief discussion includes a link to a graphic matrix.

Blogs in Education - This page attempts to explain what blogs are and how they can be used in education. There are many links to explanations and examples of blogs used in education, including a link to a short movie about blogging in high school, shich is actually posted at weblogg-ed.com (above). I've recreated the link here as well.
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/weblogs_in_ed_video

Ways to use weblogs in education - The title is self explanatory and the bulleted list is a good one. (This site may take some time to load.)

Despite the many advantages of using blogs in education, there are naturally some potential pitfals as well. Steve D. Krause has discussed some of these in detail at the page linked below.

When Blogging Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction

Reflection:

The information and links above will help you to answer the following questions, but you may need to head on over to Google and do some additional searches of your own. You will also find yourself needing to think to compose your answers.

1. Knowledge: What are three best practices using blogs in education?
2. Comprehension: Explain three reasons why educators use blogs in education.
3. Application: Select three blogs you might like to use in your own practice as an educator.
4. Analysis: What is the relationship between blogs and other educational media (such as text books or static web sites)?
5. Synthesis: How might you use blogs in your role as an educator?
6. Evaluation: What are some potential disadvantages of using blogs in education?

Please click on "comments" below to post your reflections as a comment on this post. Others will then be able to benefit from your thoughts, and will be able to add their own comments in response. This interactivity is one of the most valuable benefits of the read/write web as opposed to traditional read only web sites.