Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Educational Purposes of Blogs [for teachers]

Dear fellow educators of the 21st century,
there are many reasons for using blogs and many justifications. I am enjoying the experience and find it has added a meaningful dimension to my teaching world. Below I have placed several links to information about blogging in education.

[Students - if you are reading this, please comment regarding your own opinions of the worth of blogging for you, in relation to your school work. Justify your statements... and beware - teachers are reading this, so use correct spelling , grammar, etc...]

8>)

http://www.moe.edu.sg/edumall/rd/litreview/weblogs_in_education.pdf
a summary of the usefulness of edu-blogging from Singapore

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/eclipse/Resources/blogs.htm
a summary of useful sites relating to blogging, RSS, etc.

http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp?bhcp=1%20
Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca) is a Senior Researcher with the E-Learning Research Group, National Research Council Canada, Moncton, New Brunswick. Comments on this article can be sent to the author at <stephen@downes.ca>.

"I think it’s the most beautiful tool of the world and it allows us the most magic thing..."
—Florence Dassylva-Simard, fifth-grade student

5 comments:

laffydaffy said...

I think that the blog is reeaally coool. Mr Woody is teaching us at home, on the net. Mr Woody leaves us these challenging excercises or rethorical questions and asks for our opinions about things and we think about it and leave our comments and Mr Woody keeps on attacking us until he extracts our real opinion and our justified answer. We set up our own blogs and post our projects, writing, ideas, leave posts for social reasons and educational related posts. Blogging is also a excercise on cybersafety. Mr Woody can check our blogs and leave comments about our work and our weak points in our learning and helps us by giving us tips and mr Woody lets us do the thinking. We leave our opinions and not feel emmbarrsed about what we feel about things because it's only us and the computer, but if you say your opinion oraly you might feel uncomfortable or embarrased (like i do). There can be downs about blogger like spam and comments left by weirdos, but that can be easily fixed by using word verification. We have debates about things and justify our ideas/opinions with our knowledge. There are neat tricks you can do blogger.I think blogger is a good tool to use for learning and it's fun!!!!!!!!!

Bubbles!

laffydaffy said...

We also connect to the magical internet world. "Accio Blogger!"

Jess said...

Using blogger as a way to communicate from Mr Woody to us at home is a really good idea, because some of us may be afraid to say their real opinion in class because they may be scared of public speaking and this is a way to say their opinion as it is in their head! It also takes advantage of mordern day technology but is very easy and fun to do!
It also lets your parents know what your doing in school at the moment and they could make their own account and publish posts suggesting topics or questoing If they don't understand something and also Mr Woody can tell them how their child's basicly doing in school and if there are any improvments to be made. If you follow cyber-saftey rules then blogger can be quite safe!
So overall I think blogger is great!
And who knows how we may be communicating in the future

MrWoody said...

the thing hanging at the back of your throat is your epiglotis - you might want to check the spelling. it could have two t's. missed you today - we set up our banking system. you have $50 credit so far.

MrWoody said...

good call, lakelane - i will check your blog now to see how you are doing on the set up there.
8>)