Blogs+in+Education

== = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = **Blogs in Education** = //In Education, blogs can be used in several different ways: classroom blogs, student blogs, and digital portfolios.//

= = Ten reasons to use Blogs with students [|video].

=**Uses for Blogging in Education**= Teachers will often start a blog for providing communication to students, parents, or other teachers. Sometimes this is just the posting of homework or other assignments in one easy-to-find location. Other times this can be a richer description of the things taking place in the classroom, specifically drawing the parents into what their children are working on, or for students who have been absent. This type of blog can also take advantage of the comment feature for students and parents to ask questions or for clarification, where the answer would be of interest to all the readers.
 * Teacher Communication**

**Dialogue Generation**
A teacher blog that posts questions about current subject matter can be a great way to introduce students to responding in writing and contributing collaboratively. For instance, a teacher might ask specific thought-provoking questions about a book the class is reading, and ask for students to respond through the comments feature with their ideas. This is often done as a voluntary exercise to help demonstrate the uses of blogs in easy steps.

**Student Blogs**
Blogs helps students find a voice, creates enthusiasm for writing and communications, engages students in conversation and learning, provides an opportunity to teach about responsible journalism, and it can empower the students. The providing of each student with an individual blog seems to generate the most significant enthusiasm for blogging among students. Whether done through special programs that allow strict teacher control and filtering on the blog posts and comments, or through public services with parent and teacher oversight students with individual blogs have an opportunity to discover the work and joy of communicating their ideas in written form, and then getting feedback from others. Sometimes the blogs are not made public, and the feedback is just from classmates or specifically-allowed individuals; other times, and more often with older students, the feedback can come from the wider audience of the World Wide Web. Most often public student blogs are done under a nickname and without any personal details, so that the incredible excitement that can come from communicating with a global audience does not place the student in harm's way. Student blogging has to be overseen with coaching and training to make sure that both that personal data is not communicated and that blog posts are appropriate. [|Paper Blogging Lesson Plan]

Teacher Blogs: Teachers can blog for each other about their experiences teaching, their philosophies, and their methodologies.

A [|classroom blog] is one where the majority of the entries are created by the teacher. A classroom blog facilitates assessment and enrichment by allowing teachers to post writing assignments, prompts, links, and other resources for students.

Student blogs are blogs where the entries are created entirely by students. Traditional [|writing activities] such as journals, learning logs, and math autobiographies are all possible on a blog. But blogs also allow users to [|incorporate links], images, audio, and video into posts, increasing the potential for creative project-based learning.