Cool Tools for Cool Teaching

Blogging

Writing with Passion

Getting learners of any age to write is often a challenge. Over the last few years, though, a new vehicle for self-expression has emerged that has kids and adults writing profusely and eagerly reading each others' work. Like geocaching, it evolved from a much older writing genre: the personal journal. Embedding personal journals in the web and making them public and accessible has created something qualitatively different.

What is blogging? The word blog was formed by smashing the words web and log together. Initially, these things were called weblogs, but soon people began to drop a syllable.

In this exercise, you'll learn enough about blogging to begin using them as a source of personally useful information, and to develop some ideas for educational applications.

Exploration

Click on the diagram below to explore this topic fully. Remember that your goal is to gain an understanding of what blogging is and how it might be useful to you as an educator.

So What?

There's a lot to look at in the diagram above, and that's only scratching the surface. Can you think of projects that you could give to your class that would involve them contributing to a whole-class blog? Or a blog that is jointly authored with learners in another class somewhere else? How about using a select set of personal blogs as the stimulus for a lesson about writing styles, or logical thinking, or politics? How about developing a list of blogs that you check regularly to stay on top of some topic you're interested in?

Here are some current blogs from SDSU courses: EDTEC 470 | EDTEC 296 and a typical assignment description. What differences do you see between the 470s and 296s?

Here are some blogs I personally find interesting and check regularly:

To complete this exercise, go here to post your reaction to blogging.

For Further Exploration

There's more to know. Use this list as a starting point to explore further.

Written by Bernie Dodge. May be freely used by other educators.