Researching Blogs - Part 1

One of my commitments is to study the use of blogs in education - and then to use the blog as a vehicle for recording and sharing what I find/learn. This was prompted in part by Scott McLeod's work here in Iowa with SAI. He linked about 8 blogs from education into his workshop wiki.

I've become convinced that I have been using the web like a TV - surfing it and being stimulated. I remember some of it. forget a lot of it and don't assimilate much of it. I believe by writing (taking notes) and describing items that I explore, I will make more connections and links. I want to move beyond being amazed by the capabilities of Web2.0 to using it it enable and enhance my learning.

On to Blogs - I'm going to jump around a little. McLeod's "example 5" is Mr Mundorf's Class. He teaches 5th grade on Macro Island (Florida?). It is set up on edublogs. This blog's layout is 2 column - a main center column and the right "skinny" column. The right column is filled with enhanced features of the blog and add in widgets. If we go to the bottom - scroll down - we find "previous entries". I "clicked" back about 5 times and found the first entry - September 2006. It is easy to see the evolution of the Blog. The early posts were short and primarily narrative, sometimes with links. Overtime posts become much more colorful (pictures, embedded videos, etc.). His first posts were frequently "You Decide" - dilemmas for kids to write about. Yes you can read the student's comments.

Scroll down the right column just below the personalized clock (face is a cross-section of an ornage - most appropriate eh?) - is a blog roll - about 20 blog links are listed. It appears that these links are both ones students might use and some that seem to be more for the teacher (or teacher readers of the blog) One that caught my eye was "Speaking of History....", this blog is hosted on blogspot. This 8th grade American History teacher was Teacher of the year in Missouri in the 07-08. The blog has 250 to 300 posts since 2005. He uses lots of podcasts; his last post included Podcast #175. Lots of blog links here too. One of the widgets in the right column is realtime veiwers - a vendor called FJ FEEDJIT lets you see "who" has recently looked at the blog and here they accessed it from (I got to it from Mr. Mundorf's blog). This blog has perhaps 40 to 50 blogs listed. This blog has fewer commnets compared to the Mr Mundorf's. Perhaps students are writing about the material in their own blogs. Lots of audio and video links in this one.

Thoughts: Many resources and links - items for students to use. Some examples of how students are using the material. Can see maturity over time of the blogs - how to use plus widgets and blog capabilities I assume. This is just a start on blogs. More later.