Blogging in Education Today (part 2 in a series)

This week we're learning about teachers using “classroom blogs”

Last week we started this series examining the current state of blogging in education by looking at how today's teachers are using blogs. Our first post focused on teachers blogging about various experiences and ideas, with the intended audience essentially being other teachers, and to a lesser degree, the general internet audience.

This week we examine another category of teacher blogging, probably best referred to as “classroom blogging”. These are blogs in which teachers blog about classroom activities and experiences, often with students participating and blogging as well. The intended audience here can be the students, parents, other teachers, administrators, and so on.

As with last week's post, I've combed through many examples of classroom blogs and selected a few examples to share here. Nothing illustrates an idea quite like real world examples. Of course, with it being summer, some of these blogs are not particularly active right now, but all of them look like they're quite active during the school year.

Example Classroom Blogs

Huzzah! -  A grade 5 & 6 class of 10 & 11 year old learners, in “the beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada”. This is a nice looking site with good use of visuals like pictures, slideshows, and videos. There are also links to student blogs, and a great set of other classroom blogs in the “blogroll” listing on the right side of this page (I would think this right hand column should be visible on the home page too, but it wasn't – maybe its just a glitch).

 

Intermediate English class blog –  This may not be a flashy site, but it fits the bill just fine. Larry Ferlazzo has a number of education oriented blogs, and in this one, he delivers assignments to students, and shares experiences in the classroom.

 

Network Nine – This blog centers on “Room 9 at Hokowhitu School in New Zealand”, where Mr. Baker teaches Year 4, which consists of 8 & 9 year olds (although according to the latest post, he'll be moving to a new school this year). On this blog, he shares experiences he and his students have had, provides resources, explains homework policy, and so on.

 

Extreme Biology –  “This site is maintained by Ms. Baker and her biology students. We live in the Northeast U.S. and blog about anything biology-related.” The site is a fun site featuring a rich mix of posts by both teacher and students.

 

These are four nice examples of today's classroom blogs. There are thousands more out there, so feel free to search some out if you would like to see some more examples (a search in any popular search engine for “our classroom blog” or a similar phrase should yield plenty of results).

Next in our series …
Now that we've seen a nice selection of teacher's uses of blogging, next week we'll move on to student blogging. In addition to blogging in classroom blogs as in the examples above, students sometimes blog independantly as part of the educational process, so we'll search out some examples of this and share them. Another common type of student blogging that we'll look at is the “student experience” blog on their educational institution's web site.

In the weeks that follow, we'll move on to administrator's blogs and instructional technology blogging. As always, don't hesitate to share any comments or feedback with us in the meanwhile. Thanks!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Blogging In Education Today (a multipart series)
Blogging For Fun (and Education)
Education Related Blogs & Blogging Resources