Week #3: Blogging

PART I: Blog Visits

The world of blogging connects you to entrepreneurs, educators, and other intellects through just a few clicks of a button. I scanned through several this past week, starting with Jeff Utecht's blog post on I'm being pulled to Google. Utecht is an educator with more than 10,000 blog followers and he is a certified Google Apps trainer. Most of his posts were short but simple and he encouraged his followers to join Google Plus in his latest post. Although I am familiar with Google and its various capabilities, I had never heard of Google Plus, which is the second largest social networking site in the world with 5.8 million active followers. The post also includes helpful links that include a Google Plus User Guide and 7 Google Plus Communities to join. With Google starting to phase out the use of Blogger (see the sign-up page with the upgrade to Google Plus option), this will certainly be a post to revisit soon.

The next blog I visited was Maria Knee's classroom blog called the Kinderkids. Knee is a Kindergarten teacher in Deerfield, New Hampshire. I was drawn to her blog because I remember attending a conference she presented at a few years ago. The blog was filled with pictures of student work, class videos posted to YouTube, and Skype conversations. I like how the blog keeps followers from the school community (and the world according to the blog) connected with her class. The blog also acts as a historical database for student work and those exemplars can be shared with future generations of students. It is always challenging to go back and find an essay, poster, or presentation from a previous school year to share with a current student or class but with a class blog, the information is stored and easily shared. I look forward to starting to my own school blog to keep the school community up to date and connected to both the past and present.

The first two blogs I visited were excellent but I hit a bit of a rough patch searching through other blogs. Some were just too similar to Maria Knee's classroom blog and others were too distracting or hard to follow. Luckily, I found a blog by Vicki Davis, a Computer Science teacher and IT Integrator, who posted the Top 12 Summer Tips for Top Teachers. I appreciated her thoughts on making the worst into the best and revitalizing physical health -- two areas I have focused on in the past but have yet to find the time for this summer. Davis also had some great links in her last tip, which was to "hit a home run on the first day." I enjoyed the video link to If I Knew Then, a collection of thoughts from teachers on the first day of school. I am working with our administrative team to design our new teacher orientation in August and this video may be worth sharing.

PART II: WebQuest Preview

I have taught a variety of Social Studies classes in grades 9-12 but for the past three years I have been teaching tenth grade American Government and Economics -- two courses that require a lot creativity to keep students engaged with the curriculum. The students are usually brutally honest about the assignments and projects that they like or dislike and one particular project that has them hooked, but can always use some fine tuning, is an economics project on personal finance and budgeting. The project is relevant to the students and offers real world applicability but the final product always seems to fall a little short. The task and process for the project are the strong points and I hope to integrate Web 2.0 tools or other technology aspects to the evaluation and outcomes of the project.

Image Source

I have started to explore alternative outcomes for the project (students have written a budget analysis in the past). One helpful link was the 35 Best Web 2.0 Tools for the Classroom. I am interested in learning more about Glogster and exploring other options in this link. I have used Prezi, Wikis, and Wordle in the past but Glogster has the capability to include audio, video, clip art, and a variety of colors, fonts, and backgrounds. Many of my students are excited to get out the markers and glue to make a poster but this multimedia experience should energize most, if not all, students involved with this project.