The Fourth Annual Edublogs.org Awards were recently announced. Educators using edublogs were nominated by other educators; all edublogs users were allowed to vote for the best in each category. Here are the winners and some nominees that just might motivate and spark your imagination to create a blog. Best Individual Edublog:ScienceRoll
Best Teacher Blog:
The tempered radical
Miss Baker’s Biology Blog, Extreme Biology
Most influential post:Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? – The Fischbowl, Karl Fisch (Blogger) How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci – Wandering Ink How to Grow a Blog – blog of proximal development
Blog, short for web log, is a dynamic web page that allows the author and reader to interact online through various communications tools. For the past two years, many educators are creatively using blogs in their classrooms to engage students in their content areas.
Today, there are many resources for educators to learn more and create classroom blogs.
Examples:Richard III, Students were assigned a character from the play and created a page based on the character. Students posted comments to each other in character.
Calculus teacher assigns students to post notes to the blog; students then interact by making suggestions or asking questions.
1. Unlike a web page where you need software and sometimes fancy skills, a blog can be edited from any location and no previous web page knowledge is necessary.
2. Organized by postings usually by reverse chronological order.
3. Free, educational blog sites available.
4. Can be created as a journal, diary, research and publishing tool.If you are intrigued and would like to find out more information, see the online Jag Stacks newsletter for various links.
http://bvwlibrary.edublogs.org
Free Blog Sites for Educators:
http://www.edublogs.org
http://classblogmeister. com/
http://schoolblog.epals. com/
http://wordpress.com/
Four teachers at West are using blogs to enhance student learning.
Jenny Johnson, Tyson Ostroski, and Trent Stern collaborated with the library media specialists creating a project where students posted their writings to a blog (http://commarts.edublogs.org ). Then, students read other entries and post comments. Parents, teachers, and other community members are encouraged to listen and comment as well.
Kathryn Lawhorn set up a blog for her AP Government classes. Her first post included a video of Sam Brownback’s visit to West. By posting this online, this allowed students from all her classes to view the video.
