BP#2_2010011_EduUses4Blogs

I took some time to look at a few sites and found one by Thanh Nguyen and even though it was very simple, it was very informational. He broke it down into four main functions:

1. Classroom Management
2. Collaboration
3. Discussions
4. Student Portfolios

After reading this I decided to use a piece from each one and use it at my school in a different way. I am the grade chair for our 3rd grade team and we have had so many meetings and trainings that we have not had a chance to meet much as a team to brainstorm and collaborate. I plan to try this out with the team to see if we can use it to manage our time better while collaborating. We can discuss or brainstorm upcoming tasks and possibly have a section for our struggling students where we can all have access to the information we need.

In his blog, Thanh listed numerous educational benefits. They are as follows:

· Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
· Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
· Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
· Powerful tools to enable scaffolding learning or mentoring to occur.


Under his classroom management he talked about using it to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments or act as a question and answer board. My thought for mine would be to use it to post information given to me to pass along, upcoming deadlines and a place to brainstorm. The benefit for us would be a time factor. We are all on different schedules and my hope is that we can add items when it is convenient for us.

The discussions Thanh talked about were discussing topics outside of the classroom. I would use it to discuss scheduling issues, field trip ideas, etc. They could post ideas and repost if after reading someone else’s comment they wanted to add or take away from a previous comment. In the end we would still have a solution, but our time would be spent in a wiser manner.

He also talked about student portfolios being available for the students to review and analyze, but my thought is to have it available for our struggling students and make available for the whole team since we are departmentalized and need access to information with greater ease.

I am anxious to get this started. My only concern is you still have to get teachers to check it and make comments…. What do you think?