Chapter 3: Get Started! (pp.43-54) by: Will Richardson

• The true potential of blogs in school are when students and teachers use them as publishing tools. (p. 43)
• Take some time to read some good blogs
• Start at: SupportBlogging.com
• Edublog award site:http://tinyurl.com/62crba
• start with links
• annotate the links
• write more in depth about what you are reading

BLOGGING WITH STUDENTS (pp.45-46)

• Get students reading blogs
• Prepare a list of Weblogs with appropriate content and look at some of these sites with the students
• Let students respond to these blogs
• Post a question each day
• Have small groups of students start creating posts to the same Weblog
• Give each student a blog

BLOG SAFETY

• Make sure that students, parents, administrators are clear about the expectations and the reasoning behind it (p. 46)
• Make sure everyone has the proper permission (p. 46)
• Use only first name of students or pseudonyms for students with unique names (p. 46)
• Teach kids never to publish personal identifiers about themselves or others (p. 46)
• Teach kids to know the process of reporting problems in their blogs, whether technical or content related (p. 46)
• Teach staff on the use and purpose of blogs (p. 47)
• Bud Hunt has a great resource for documents of these types at his "Blogging Policies and Resources Wiki" http://tinyurl.com/5y919n (p. 47)
• Respond to what students write
• Students can self-select their best blogging posts, reflect on those selections and include those reflections in an overall evaluation of their Weblog use (p. 47)

BLOGGING STEP BY STEP

• http://www.blogger.com/
• signing up for a blog at Blogger is easy
• the address of your site will be http://whatevernameryouchoose.blogspot.com/ (p.48)
• When you click on a blog name from the Dashboard, you'll be taken to a the page where you can create and edit posts (p. 49)
• Hit the New Post button to create a new post to the homepage (p. 49)
• "Settings" tab links you to configure how you want your comments to work (p. 50)
• Have students save all of their posts as drafts until the teacher gives them permission to post (p. 50)

What are some great blogs that you have read?

CLASSROOM USES OF WEBLOGS (pp. 38-40) by: Will Richardson

You as a teacher can create a blog to...

• reflect on your teaching experience
• keep a log of PD
• write a description of a specific teaching unit
• describe what worked for you in the classroom
• provide some teaching tips for other teachers
• share ideas
• explore important teaching and learning uses

Start a class blog to...

• post assignments
• communicate with parents
• post writing prompts
• provide online readings
• invite student comments
• create a literature circle
• link your class with another class somewhere in the world

As a teacher-librarian, what can you use blogs for?

Chapter 2 Weblogs: Pedagogy and Practice by Will Richardson

• A weblog is an easily created, easily updateable Website that allows an author (or authors) to publish instantly to the Internet from any Internet connection (p. 17)
• They are comprised of reflections and conversations that in many cases are updated 9p.17)
• Blogs engage readers with ideas and questions and links. They ask readers to think and to respond. They demand interaction (p. 18)
• 2 new blogs are created every second! (p. 19)
• Bogging is a genre that engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day's events or feelings (p. 19)
• Blogs can: promote critical and analytical thinnking, creative, intuitive and associational thinking, analogical thinking, be a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information, combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction (p. 20)

HOW BLOGS ARE USED IN SCHOOLS:

• Class Portal: communicates information about the class and archives course materials (p. 21)
• Online Filing Cabinet: students can archive their work, they can organize their work, they can share their work (p. 22)
• E-Portfolio: Students collect what represents their best work, then they reflect on these choices, finally they publish the results for others to see (p.23)
• Collaborative Space: create space where students can collaborate with each other 9p. 24)
• Knowledge Management and Articulation: communicating internally through school committess- archive minutes, share links...(p. 25)
• School Website (p. 25)

THE PEDAGOGY OF WEBLOGS (pp.26-28)

• Weblogs are a constructivist tool for learning
• Weblogs expand the walls of the classroom
• Blogs archive the learning that teachers and students do, facilitating all sorts of reflection and metacognitive analysis.
• Weblog is a democratic tool that supports different learning styles
• The use of weblogs can enhance the development of expertise in a particular subject
• Blogs can teach students the new literacies they will need to function in an ever expanding information society

A NEW WRITING GENRE

• "Connective writing" a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, demands clairty and cogency in its construction, is done for a wide audience and links to the sources of the ideas expressed (p, 28)

SCAFFOLDING BLOGGING (pp. 31-32)

1. Students find interesting sites of information
2. Deconstruct the design of the site
3. Write about what more they would like to see
4. Bring primary sources (authors, scientists, politicians) into the classroom through the blog so students can ask questions and reflect on the answers.

BLOGGING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

• http://tinyurl.com/2v4862 AP Calculus
• http://tinyurl.com/63zbl9 Extreme Biology
• http://tinyurl.com/5lyr59 The Write Weblog

BLOGS AS RESOURCES (pp.36-37)

• Reliability of Weblogs
• find out as much as you can about the author or the Weblog
• Find out what reputation the blogger has among his peers
• Look at the"blogroll" or list of blogs that the blogger links to