CLassroom+Blogs

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.
 * Showcase 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 (where groups of students read and discuss the same book).
 * 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.
 * You can encourage your students (either on your Weblog using the comments feature or on their own Weblogs) to blog…**
 * Their reactions to thought-provoking questions.
 * Their reactions to photos you post.
 * Journal entries.
 * Results of surveys they carry out as part of a class unit.
 * Their ideas and opinions about topics discussed in class.
 * You can have your students create their own Weblogs to…**
 * Learn how to blog.
 * Complete class writing assignments.
 * Create an ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing.
 * Express their opinions on topics you are studying in class.

Source: **Blogs**, **Wikis**, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson