Educational Blogging
Blogs in the classroom
>St. Joseph elementary school; a technological integrated school, uses three types of blogging in its classroom.
1.Classroom Web Space – it is used for classroom announcements.
2.Public Personal Communication Zone – it is used to post work reflection.
3.Private Personal Space – it is used fro students thoughts and teacher guidance.
“Even though the world of fifth grade may seem remote to educators in the college and university system, these students, when they enter postsecondary education, may have had more experience writing online for an audience than writing with a pen and paper for a teacher”.(Downes. Educational Blogging)
>Will Richardson, supervisor of institutional technology at Hunterdon CEnterla Regionla High school in Flemington, New Jersey is known as one of the leading proponents of blogging in education.
The number of educational bloggers is growing daily.

The critiques about blogs
>Some people view blogs as a set of personal comments and observations. However, this is not the case; blogs are a mixture of links, commentaries, essays, news, events and best of all, communication
>For Charles Cooper, blogs became a useful tool to update news days after 9-11.
“Blogging not only allowed us access to the event; it made us part of the event “

What is a barger?
>A Barger is a webpage where a weblogger logs all the other webpages she finds interesting (the new information is place in the top of the webpage in order for the visitors to view it)

The development of blogs
>Blogs first began as personal journals and diaries during the 1990’s; however, as Catherine Seipp comments, after September 11, 2001, a new type of blogs began to appear. Different forms the first type of blogs, the new type of blogs were more concerned in criticizing politics.
Either way you see it, blogs can be used to view your friend’s or enemy’s posting and comment on it (because of this blogs are consider more of a , format and process)
>Because of the freedom that we, the users, have with blogs, blogs are also considered personal publishing.

Five major uses of blogs in education
>1. Teachers use blogs as a way to replace standard class web pages. Instructors also use blogs in order to provide class activities.
In general teachers find blogs as an advantage with their classroom activities. It is flexible to use too.
>2. Teachers use blogs in order to provide links relating to their courses.
>3. Blogs are use to organized in-class discussion and class agenda.
>4. Teachers use blogs as a tool to provide summary reading
>5. Finally teachers help students to create their own blogs in order to show their school work, such as school projects, summer reading, and homework.

Two major categories of blogging software
>Hosting serviced is a website that provides you with tools in order for you to create a blog, suchas templates for your blog, built-in accessories, URLs. These are all similar to the service to host your own web site.
-www.blogger.com is the most popular hosting service. This blog has about 1.1 million users
-www.livejournal.com is another major hosting service
-other major blog hosting service include Groksoup, salon blogs, and TypePad.
>Installed Applications is the second type of blogging software. This type of software is obtained for a provider and install on your own web site. Its number of users is lower, yet, they are consider to have more knowledge with blogs. This type of software is commonalty used more for teachers. It also provides the users with a biger variety of choices than Hosting service. www.moveabletype.org has the best remotely installed application

Problems with students’ postings
>Many students had being suspended because of the improper comments in their blogs. For example, a student at St Martin High School in Mississipi was suspended for three days aster suing her blog to call a teacher “perverted”
Students get motivated to write
>Rosalie Brach explains that she now, after she began using blogs, she writes more. In addition, she gets motivated to check for spelling errors because she knows that others will be reading her postings.
Why a blog and not a book
>blogs allow the user to base their ideas on merit rather than origin.
> Blogs allow readers to hear the day-to-day thoughts of presidential candidates, software company executives, and magazine writers, who all, in turn, hear opinions of people they would never otherwise hear.
Criticism of blugs
As Richard long explains, blogs are not for every one especially if you don’t have empathy and recognition for the blog.
For many blog users, it comes a point on which they loss the interest of using blugs. (What is the point)
Coming in touch with blogs
>Blogs are not about writing, they are about reading, yet, reading what it is of most interest to you (community, culture, and living). Blogs are similar to a conversation, yet, when a person appreachiates the conversation and he/she make reasonable comments, however, when he or she do not, the comments become less valuable. Your comments become of bigger value when you engage with the content and with the author.
> Blogs also bound communities.
Finally
The process of reading online, engaging a community, and reflecting it online is a process of bringing life into learning. Bloggers connect education out side of school. Blogs is view as a neddle that sew together what is now a lot of learning in isolation with no real connection among the disciplines. Ultimately, aren’t we trying to teach our kids how to learn, and isn’t that what blogging is all about.

The three questions relating to my article
1.What are the two types of blog softwares?

Hosting services and Installed Applications are the two tpes of blog softwares available
-Jennifer Williams

2.How does St. Joseph Elementary school use blogs in its classroom?

Classroom Web Space (announcments), Public Personal Communication Zone (work reflection), and Private Personal Space (personal thoughts) are used at this school.
-Jennifer Williams

3.Why does the author relates blogs with a conversation?

 Create your own free wiki!HelpPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS