Blogging as an Educational Tool

I have never have been a fan of blogging because I felt as though it was a waste of time. I didn't really think there was any purpose to blogging besides people going online and sharing their thoughts about random topics. I would have never even considered that blogging could be a beneficial education tool.
I was reading an article entitled "Blogs in Education" by Scott Huette and he included a list of educational uses for blogging that I thought were very interesting and I would like to share them.

You might like to create a reflective, journal type blog to…

• reflect on your teaching experiences.
• keep a log of teacher-training experiences.
• write a description of a specific teaching unit.
• describe what worked for you in the classroom or what didn’t work.
• provide some teaching tips for other teachers.
• write about something you learned from another teacher.
• explain teaching insights you gain from what happens in your classes.
• share ideas for teaching activities or language games to use in the classroom.
• provide some how-to’s on using specific technology in the class, describing how you used this technology in your own class.
• explore important teaching and learning issues.


You might like to start a class blog to…

• post class-related information such as calendars, events, homework assignments and other pertinent class information.
• post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.
• communicate with parents if you are teaching elementary school students.
• post prompts for writing.
• provide examples of classwork, vocabulary activities, or grammar games.
• provide online readings for your students to read and react to.
• gather and organize Internet resources for a specific course, providing links to appropriate sites and annotating the links as to what is relevant about them.
• post photos and comment on class activities.
• invite student comments or postings on issues in order to give them a writing voice.
• publish examples of good student writing done in class.
• show case student art, poetry, and creative stories.
• create a dynamic teaching site, posting not only class-related information, but also activities, discussion topics, links to additional information about topics they are studying in class, and readings to inspire learning.
• create a literature circle.
• create an online book club.
• make use of the commenting feature to have students publish messages on topics being used to develop language skills.
• ask students to create their own individual course blogs, where they can post their own ideas, reactions and written work.
• post tasks to carry out project-based learning tasks with students.
• build a class newsletter, using student-written articles and photos they take.
• link your class with another class somewhere else in the world

After going over this list of educational uses I realized the value of blogging in education and I now would use it in my own teaching and I would highly recommend that other instructors utilize the tool as well.