Kids Blogging

After this assignment I have been starting to think of ways to use blogs in my classroom. I could so easily type a blog for the parents to use. That would be nice for both the parents and the students, but I want the students to use it. My thoughts are to:

1.      Have a weekly question on the blog that the students can respond to by Friday as a homework assignment.

2.      Have a weekly question that the students can respond to once a week in the class.

My problem with the second option is how do I get enough time for the students to each get a chance to respond during the school day? I am sure that I can set up a schedule to give the students 3 -5 min to respond by the end of the week.

While I was thinking of this I looked up sites about how to teach children to blog. I found these interesting. http://kidslearntoblog.com/ and http://kidblog.org/home.php

Top 20 Teacher Blogs

After a week....well one post and several comments...of blogging I have found myself looking forward to using this blog as away to express myself. I have had a lot of ideas pop into my head about what to write about this week.

I decided to talk about the need to use blogs more as a collaborative tool. This week I found myself deperately trying to find an online game for my students to practice subjects and predicates. The curriculum that we use teaches the students to look for the whole subject and predicate. However, I couldn't find games that fit that description. Eventually, with the help of a coworker I was able to find a site.


I know that there are blogs out there for teachers to share ideas. We have even discussed some of them in class as well as Diggo. However, until today I never really thought I would be one that would be interested in actively using a blog or being a frequent blogger.

I did a quick search to see what type of blogs I could find. I found the Top 20 Teacher Blogs created by Scholastic. I thought that this is a great place to start. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3752562

They are separated by subject or discipline. For example there is a great blog directed towards special education or an Inner City Blog. I still haven't found one directed towards Language Arts but I think this is a great place to start.

Brittany

iKeepBookmarks

I have never blogged before. It seems easy, but as I sit here I am not sure what to write about. I do have a question that I was going to post in the conference area of my online classroom, but I have decided to put it here instead.

In Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms he mentions Social Bookmarking Services. One of the sites he mentions is Diigo. I have briefly looked at it. So, I admit that I am not super familiar with the site. In my classroom I use iKeepBookmarks.com to bookmark sties for my students. They now have access to many of the sites we use in class at home. My question is does iKeepBookmarks.com count as a social bookmarking service?

The sites both seem similar, but I feel like iKeepBookmarks doesn't count as social bookmarking. If it does it is clearly not as sophisticated at Diigo.


Here is the link to the site I was discussing. http://ikeepbookmarks.com/
 In comparison here is the link to Diigo. http://www.diigo.com/