Blogs

This week we were supposed to find a couple of educational blogs, and here are my results:

Blogs that I like:
KinderKids Classroom
http://thekinderkids.edublogs.org/

The person that maintains the blog is the kindergarten teacher.
I like this blog because it showcases the students work. If you click on a student's name you can link to their work, which I think would be really nice for parents. Another reason that I liked it is that there were links for parents to view important information, which makes it very trustworthy. I think that one of the problems that you might encounter with this is privacy issues from the parents concerned about their children but other than that it looks great! It is a very nice example of how to use a blog to present student's work.


Learning and Laptops
http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com/

The people who maintain this blog are the students and the teacher. This site was really nice because you could easily find who maintained the blog because there is list on the right-hand side that says "Contributors" and you could click a link to find out more information about each person. I also liked how this teacher used the blog to communicate with his/her students when they weren't in school. This type of blog would be better to use with older students. It was neat and put together well.

Blogs that I didn't like:
TipLine - Gates' Computer Tips
http://tipline.blogspot.com/

I didn't like this suggestion from the book because it looked like one big page of ads. I couldn't find an author and for the most part I couldn't tell if some of the parts were information from the blog, link to another site, or an ad. Very cluttered and confusing. Not a page that I would trust! It has a big banner at the top that sounds like they are trying to make an argument but none of the links below seem to reference the top. Not the type of blog that I want to have!


Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog
http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/p/meet-mrs-yollis.html

I didn't like this one too much because it was poorly done. It didn't really seem exciting or creative. It looked like the teacher frantically slapped together one night. I also didn't like how all the page links were shoved together at the top. It just didn't seem professional. You can find who created the blog but overall I wasn't really impressed. It is updated regularly so I will give her that but the font choices are horrid. She has a lot of stuff in red and I find that really distracting. Not really something that I want to imitate.

How I could use blogs in my classroom:

• Keep parents updated on classroom information and activities-I could post a weekly update talking about what we are going to do in class that week, what forms parents should be looking for from their children, fees parents will need to pay (if necessary), and maybe include a link to the school lunch menu and school district website.
• Post pictures of student work for parents to view online.
• Post pictures of recent field trip.
• Post a list of subjects that we are currently learning, so that parents could perhaps provide additional material or let students go to a public library and check out material on the subject.
• Post links to the online grade book if the school uses one. That way parents can be informed of their child's grades.
• For parent teacher conferences post the list of scheduled appointments (also that way parents can know exactly how long and when they need to be there for their parent-teacher conference).
• Post videos of school events such as plays and concerts.