To blog or not to blog

I really want to set up a classroom blog but am hesitant. Oftentimes when I suggest a project that uses the Internet, I get shut down by someone in a position of "authority" (I use this term loosely) that says, "all students don't have access to a computer, this won't work". I guess you can say my blogging spirit has been crushed.

Now, the spark has been reignited and I'm looking for cool ways to integrate this technology source into my lessons. I think that an online reading log would be interesting, or I could create the blog for my poetry unit and have students post poems that they have written. Whatever I decide, it has to have set purpose.

According to Echlin I setting a purpose for my blog could be any of the following:

• Classroom management: Use a blog to post assignments, handouts, and notices. You can also put up study notes and have students take turns summarizing what happened in school that day.
• Learning journal: Patricia Harder, a seventh-grade teacher at Henley Middle School, in Crozet, Virginia, uses individual or small-group blogs as a place for students to "write reflectively" on what they learned from a particular assignment and how they might do better next time.
• Online notebook: Limiting access to teacher and individual students only, you can use the blog as a way to track students' progress. Harder found using a blog this way particularly helpful when she suspected one of her students had a learning disability. "I went to the committee that evaluates students for learning disabilities and was able to present them with a record of the sentence structure my student had used," she explains.
• Class discussion: Assign blogs to small groups, or set up a single blog for the whole class. You may post entries for discussion, or have individual students and guest bloggers post entries.
• Personal expression: Give students individual blogs for posting whatever they want. This might seem like a recipe for disaster, but Konrad Glogowski, who teaches grades 7-9 at Fern Hill School, in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, and is the creator of the Blog of Proximal Development Web site, found this format to be a huge success. Inspired by an audience of their peers, his students posted poetry, journal entries, and reactions to articles they had read, as well as prolific comments on the blogs of fellow students.

Hopefully, my blog will be up and running soon. *crossing fingers*

Echlin, H. (2007). Digital discussion: take your class to the internet. Edutopia. Retrieved from

http://www.edutopia.org/digital-discussion-take-your-class-to-internet