Week 3
| Your Class Blog Taking It To The Web |
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| Once again
this week's Tool Time is easy to summarize: Create a blog and add
your video podcast from last week to it. Why should you do a such a thing? There's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is: Because you are teaching digital natives. The long answer is: Because these digital natives will spend 20,000 hours online by the time they are 20. During that time they will create their own content, comment on content, collect content, use social networks to read and watch content created by their peers, and |
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| do a lot of gaming--some
serious, most for fun. For them, "content" and
"online" have become virtual synonyms. Did I mention texting? In short, your students are intensely active online for 4-6 hours a day. Indeed, the mere fact they spend hours unwired in a physical classroom is a problem for them and for the quality of their education--a form of digital divide that demands every teacher's attention. These students have grown up using digital technology to create, collaborate, explore, and speak out. They desire to find meaning in their world and to communicate what they discover. Today's emphasis on social constructivism is not just an educational fad; it is a necessity to meet the needs of today's students. The question is no longer to what extent social context plays a role in learning. Digital technology and Web 2.0 ensure that social context plays a critical, inextricable role in learning today. The question is how educators use digital technology to foster a productive social context for learning in their classrooms. Tons O' Stuff It's hard to resist doing a "Top 10" list for teacher blogging platforms because so many are out there. I evaluated as many blogging platforms as I could find using these criteria:
Both ClassPress and EduBlogs Pro are "almost free." ClassPress is $2.66 per month and EduBlogs Pro is about $3.00 per month. ClassPress offers a 15-day trial; EduBlogs offers either a free trial account or a 30-day trial of its Pro account. (Cancel your account during the trial period for a full refund.) One of the things that tipped my decision is that EduBlogs.org has a dedicated blogger (Sue Waters) who posts each day or multiple times per day some helpful tips, tricks and meaningful discussions about educational blogging. Be sure to bookmark her: http://theedublogger.com/ Here are my "Top 10" blog/web site hosts for teachers. Feel free to explore them and share your impressions and recommendations:
Getting Started with EduBlogs.org For this exercise, you can register for the free or Pro account. Regarding tutorials for EduBlogs, there is a wealth of text and video resources. Getting Started With Your Blog http://help.edublogs.org/getting-started-with-edublogs/ This page on the EduBlogs.org site has a page of .pdf documents divided into categories designed to lead you step-by-step in setting up your blog:
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