Blogger a great tool for classroom use

Okay STMA techie teachers.... What is a blog and how can I use it in my classroom? Well, in short, a blog is a nickname for a web log. Teachers can use it as an online forum for discussion of classroom topics. A unique aspect of a blog is that it invites the world to join in on your discussion! Hey, if you are talking about the holocaust, you might get someone's perspective from Germany, or someone who has visited a concentration camp. If your class is covering endangered species, maybe someone will respond to you blog about the recovery of the Minnesota Timberwolf? If you are not ready for the world's input, you can limit it to just your students.

Just as importantly, communicating on the internet is something that today's students are very familiar with, which should increase motivation. Here is an example of how a blog might work in a typical English class....

The teacher might post a question about the leadership styles of Jack and Ralph in the novel "Lord of the Flies" to the class in the classroom blog. Students can then access the blog from home or any computer lab at school and post their opinions or comments. A discussion will soon follow as students will reply to other students postings. Don't worry... the teacher can moderate all of the comments before they are actually posted so nobodies feelings will be hurt. This moderating of comments is done very easily in the teacher's school e-mail.

If you are worried about internet security and child privacy concerns, this can all be done anonymously if the students use a nickname, username, or a number code assigned by the teacher. There is really no way an outsider can contact anybody participating in the blog discussion.

There are many blog hosts available on the internet. This blog is hosted by Blogger.com which is owned by Google. It is very user friendly and looks like it has all the features a teacher would like to use. There might be better hosts, if you look for them. But, at this point, I would recommend Blogger.com