Weblogs, Ch. 2

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Tools

Ch 2.  Weblogs, Pedagogy & Practice

This chapter helped clarify the purpose and uses of a classroom blog.  It clearly defined what the outline of a blog is.  It explained how it should be written and it even gave tips on how we can be a bit wiser about crediting blog sources.  I found a really useful site that described blogs and their purposes: http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging

The blogs was defined as a short essay that engages readers with ideas, questions and links.  It needs to be written in a unique format which the author labeled as connective writing.  This is a method that asks questions of readers in a conversational manner.  In my classroom, a blog would be a useful method of introducing and reflecting on the math curriculum.  It would help answer the questions about where the student would use math in real life.  A blog could serve as a great place to post excellent examples of student work for students and parents alike.  One of the primary uses would be to serve as a repository for homework syllabuses rather than rely on constantly changing programs offered by the school system.  Lastly, I thought the idea of connecting a classroom of students to other teacher and students in other cultures was really interesting.  This is a wonderful way of exposing students to the broader world.

It is interesting to note that we need to teach students to use and be aware of some of the cons of using this tool.  We will have to teach students to check on author’s credibility by goggling the author’s name, for example.  Other ways of checking credibility and accuracy were also included.  I found this to be very useful.