Welcome to the blogosphere: the educational use of blogs.

An Annotation by Jeff Ayer

Ray covers the basics of using a weblog (blog) in the classroom at literally any educational level, K-12.

Dubbing them “edublogs”, Ray cites four great ways to incorporate blogs into the classroom, including:

• using them to communicate information to students and parents,
• to provide instructional resources and useful links,
• to allow students the opportunity to collaborate with one another on various projects without being in the classroom itself, and
• to showcase student work and projects, like poetry and photographs of project work.

Ray also highlights some cons involved in using blogs as part of a curriculum.  First, she looks at the accessibility for students.  Her greatest recommendation is that,

“teachers should determine whether or not students have computer and internet access at home before assigning edublogs as instructional tools outside of the school environment.”

She also notes that accessing “Kids’ Rules for Online Safety” at http://www.safekids.com/ is a must for teachers who “post class work on an edublog – whether text, drawings, or pictures” (177).  Also, no names, addresses, or phone numbers should be associated with students in a direct manner.

Good points in this article for any beginning “edublog” user.

Ray, J.  (2006).  Welcome to the blogosphere:  the educational use of blogs. Kappa delta pi record:  175-177.