Expanding on the the Potential of Blogs in teaching

Further expanding on my post of my SWOT analysis of this topic I am now going to try to think of and describe some ways I could be using blogs in a classroom environment.

Blogs can be used so many ways within a classroom. Some ideas would be to:

• Use them once a question has been scaffolded (to keep students on topic). 
• To keep a learning journal that can be admitted as an assessment for what they learned. 
• It can be a place that is updated weekly by a teacher with what is to be taught the following week allowing and asking the students for input on how they would like some of their learning to take place. 
• It can used as a place to post pictures, videos, weblinks etc of the class work for parents and guardians to access to see what the class is up to.
• It can be used between schools or classes using comment posts to communicate.
• A research tool to log and record information gathered and learned that a professional can be asked to comment on regularly.
• The students can use it in any way they can come up with in presenting assessments or ongoing class tasks.

A way I thought I could use blogs in a school since, I am only currently volunteering once a week for robotics, even though the class works on the projects I set and, others regularly through each week is to:

• Get the students to create a blog for robotics.
• Edit the page till it looks how they want it to.
• Ask them to regularly post text, pictures, videos in the blog to allow me to see what they have been doing in between my visits.
• Ask them to post ideas of robots they might like to try and build or are interested in learning about.
• A place they can post YouTube clips of LegoNXT robots they have found that gives them some inspiration to build some other robots.
• This would allow me to keep up to date on their work and comment on some ideas and encouragement for the students.
• I could also answer questions they might have that the teacher can not answer.
• I could also get them to post weblinks of programming and build instructions from robots they like so we can always access them quickly since the information would be in one place.
• Doing this would also allow me to show what I have been able to do with the class with my inspirational lecturer and fellow robotics enthusiast at the university. This would allow me to show them something I am having a problem with instead on trying to explain it.

There are so many opportunities and ways that a blog could be used in a classroom within any subject area. Doing so would just involve the teacher sitting down and thinking about it, google ideas or ask around with fellow teachers to see if anything interesting or engaging is found.

My current experience and knowledge of blogs is only what I have done so far within this course. I have already discovered how beneficial blogs can be to a learner. It has allowed me to keep track of what I am learning. I can express my ideas, thoughts, concepts and knowledge in a way I feel safe and comfortable with. I have also found it fun and engaging to read and comment on others blogs within this class, it has allowed me to see others point of view and how they have interpreted the course information.

Here are some sites I have found that can give anyone some ideas on how to use blogs within the classroom:

1. http://www.adrianbruce.com/blogging/blogging.htm
2. http://legacy.teachersfirst.com/content/blog/blogideas2.cfm
3. http://edublogs.org/
4. http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/blogging-unit.pdf

Hopefully someone will get some benefit out of these websites I have already found some useful information.