Blogging for Home-School Communication Tools

Here are some links to pages with ideas on how to make your blog more secure.

Within Blogger
How to limit access to the blog:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42673&topic=12448
How to make the comment feature more school-friendly
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41443&topic=12456

Text for Newsletter Practice

I always have trouble coming up with text when I'm trying out some new things in Word, so here are some links to text that might inspire you to insert pictures and try out the tricks we'll cover. Just copy and paste into your document as you need text.

Teaching Quotes
http://www.netrox.net/~labush/teachqts.htm

How to Give a College Lecture
http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/course/thoughts/karp/karp.html

Thoughts on Learning
http://zia.hss.cmu.edu/miller/teaching/quotes.html

And if you already have your own text in mind, feel free to use it! I'm just not that creative on the spot.

Blogging for School-Home Communication

Here are some examples of schools and teachers using blogs to make school-home connections. Some are very elaborate, with pictures and videos posted. Some are simple, with just text. Some are updated quite often, and others are updated monthly or quarterly.

http://blogs.canby.k12.or.us/parkerj/category/Parent%20Communication

https://webapps.saugus.k12.ca.us/newsletters/_weblog/everyone.php

http://lewiselementary.org/

http://www.mpsomaha.org/willow/blog/faussteacher/

http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337

http://blogs.oaisd.org/236

http://mrscowansclass.blogspot.com/

http://www.butlerville.net/1a/

http://mrsrsroom.blogspot.com/

http://www.oursaviorchurch.org/school/faculty/gthorp/

http://schimelnews.blogspot.com/

This particular blog is hosted by Blogger, which is a Google division. Get started at https://www.blogger.com/start

EduBlogs is another popular option. Get started at http://edublogs.org/
I've used EduBlogs with students, as it's designed with students in mind. Plus, you can customize the headers in some of the templates, which allows you to make it more personal for your school or class.

Most of the major blog services appear to have the same setups. For a breakdown of blog parts, check out these two sites:
http://www.hwyblogs.com/hiw-blog-parts.php
(a site designed by truckers, for truckers, I believe)

http://www.perrotlibrary.org/whatisablog.htm
(scroll down until you see a numbered blog page.)

Create your Own Challenge

Think about a topic you cover with your students. Pose a question or challenge for them based on the topic. You can have students attempt to find a specific site that you've already found- this tests their searching strategies. You can pose an open-ended question and have students support their answers with information they locate- this tests their searching, reading, and synthesizing skills. You can have students examine a bogus site (with or without telling them it's bogus)- this tests their use of website evaluation skills.

Create your own challenge and leave it as a comment here. Hopefully we can get other people to check them out and suggest ways to change or improve them, or use them with their own classes!

Information Challenge

I'm looking for an interactive site to teach my class about how the human heart works. Use Google to search for a site that you think will do the job. Leave a comment, by clicking on "comments," that tells what your search terms were, what site you chose (include a link to the site), and why you chose it. Be sure to think about the website evaluation elements we've discussed!

Beginner Blogging Session

Welcome to Beginner Blogging! While we are getting ready, please take some time to tell us a little about yourself- who you are, what and where you teach, what your technology experience or background is, and what you know and think about blogs.

You can leave a comment with this information by clicking on "comments" under this post. Leave as much or as little information as you feel comfortable with. I will delete these after today's session.

Check this out!

I'm trying to see how I like different blogging sites...