Check out these class blogs!

I went to http://theedublogger.com/check-out-these-class-blogs to get a feel for how other classroom blogs look and work. The variety of blogs used by teachers is fantastic! I discovered many interesting sites as well as some ideas for my own blog. Here are my thoughts on five of these classroom or teacher blogs.

http://pioneeryearbook.blogspot.com/
This blog was created for a very specific audience and limited timeframe. Basically for assignments and conversations with her students, it’s almost like email updates from the teacher. I didn’t find the white text on black background to be easy to read – it gets tiring after a short time. The author’s profile is very detailed and deep and led me to another of her blogs which I found easier to read and more interesting: http://mrsgbookreviews.blogspot.com/ . On this blog, I discovered http://www.dailylit.com/home which is a great way to get classic literature emailed to you each day in short segments– maybe now I can finish some of the books I should have read in high school!

http://raigmore.edublogs.org/
This blog has an attractive first impression with lots of links to their other blogs and pertinent information sites. The video slideshow is enjoyable. The blog entries are concise with one photo and a brief yet interesting description by student – links mentioned as needed if the reader wanted to delve more. For example, it directs you to the writer’s blog to read more of students’ writing or to the ECO blog to take a litter survey. Useful gadgets like calendar, moon phases, current photo of school, local weather as well as links to sites families would use like fun stuff, homework help, junior high website, internet safety, and more. I especially like the short survey gadget that gives immediate feedback. This definitely feels like a blog for older students and one that probably requires a significant time commitment.

http://angliakids.edublogs.org/
This website is a very good example of how a blog can be used as a learning tool. The teacher used her posts to interact with her students so they could practice writing in English. She asked questions that student teams answered in their comments to her blog entry. This would be a great way to practice computer literacy skills as well as writing skills. Also posted were slideshows that student teams had created for presentations. I like the flag counter gadget on this blog that counts visitors by flag of their home country.

http://lpatrick29.edublogs.org/
This blog has several intriguing features. Each listed entry has a yellow star for the “bullet” that changed to red as you scrolled over the item – then it was hot and clickable. There is a tags widget that listed topics that could be searched for in the blog postings with larger font size for a word that is mentioned more often (for example, field trip or themes or science). There are legible, clear headings on gadgets and several useful gadgets like a Google calendar link for “what’s going on today?” showing today’s events in the school. Some postings have a voice recording, http://voicethread.com/ , with the student’s photos. The sound quality was spotty (probably because kids are young!) but this would be a great way to assess student’s learning as well as share learning with their parents. A shelfari widget http://www.shelfari.com/widget allows you to add a “bookshelf” with picture of favorite books. Rolling your cursor over the book pulls up a short synopsis. Clicking on the book cover takes you to reviews, buying info, and other similar books.

http://mrmillersblog.com/
Of all the blogs I looked at, this blog is the easiest to read because it is the simplest – very legible with plain white background and black text, one other font color for hot links/clickable text, and not so many widgets or side bars to distract the reader. It was easy to find out what this site is about and who is writing it. I like how this teacher included links to student group blogs where students provide the postings and information. This seems like a great way for students to work together to report and publish what they have learned especially in history, geography, science. The postings introduced me to scribble maps http://www.scribblemaps.com/ which allow students to create interactive maps using real maps and their own clickable comments or pop-up explanations.