People blog about anything and everything. Seriously, you can find a blog that pertains to nearly any interest you can think of. Some are awful, but hey! Some aren't. It makes sense then that the online community of educators also partake in this blogging fun. The ideas that teachers put in their blog posts can be extremely valuable in sharing tips and ideas with other teachers.
I have been looking at two as of late. They are history-related because, well, I like history and want to teach it. The first is Speaking of History, a blog written by a middle school history teacher from Missouri. I found his post recent post (Aug 1) most exemplary of how edublogging can be used in a variety of ways. In this post he talks about his personal goals for the upcoming 2012-2013 school year. His goals are concrete and manageable, such as "learn students names quickly". He is challenging himself to become a better educator in small, tangible ways. He is also making his goals public knowledge, out there for the world to see. This makes him more accountable for his actions, and perhaps is the reason why a teacher would choose to blog these.
The other blog I've been enjoying is sponsored by the US National Archives, and is called Today's Document. This is a tumblr blog, and because I have a tumblr it makes it especially easy for me to follow new posts. There is a new post daily that has a scanned image and description of an important document in US history. Examples include photographs, letters, video clips, legal documents, etc. etc. I really recommend checking it out to anyone who has the slightest interest in history -- very cool stuff. I will definitely be looking at this on a regular basis because I use tumblr regularly, though I haven't posted in some time *cough*: silly MAC program, silly grad school ;-)
I am definitely intrigued at the different uses of edublogging. I could see myself creating a blog for my courses also, wherein I could operate as the administrating blog poster, but my students could comment, pose questions, etc. I think this could be a great tool as well in order to incorporate elements of historical study that I may not have the time or opportunity to cover in class. (i.e. poetry, philosophy, music, film)
I say yee-haw to edublogging. Blog on, ya crazy edubloggers.
Enjoy, kittens.
I'm a fan of the National Archives posts, too. They also have some amazing resources online for teaching with primary sources: worksheets, lesson plans, and digitized primary sources! http://www.archives.gov/
ReplyDeleteLike Kristin and your lovely self, I'm sold on the National Archives. I've always loved quotidian tear-off calendars, Word-of-the-Day emails, all that; this felt like another version of that, a daily burst of knowledge from our collective past. Edublogging is a brilliant interactive possibility; I want to get involved, and please let me know if you do!
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of creating a class blog that your students can update. I think it's a great way to continue discussions about class content outside of the classroom in an informal way. Also putting up photos and links to fun things for students to check out whenever they feel like can make the class less focused on graded work and more on exploration.
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