02 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Class,

I want to thank you all for providing me with a wonderful class last evening. You were all great-very interested and curious, and accepting. I thoroughly enjoyed you all and I can't wait to see you in class again.


I'd like to cover the following items before our second session begins:

A basic definition of various flavors of blogs along with a historical time line
of their development can be found below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging_timeline



A more lengthy history can be accessed here:

http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html


Blog related resource links can be found at:
http://www.writerswrite.com/blogging/links.htm



Probably the most important topic at this time is to familiarize yourself with
some tools that will help you locate useful blogs.


I'd like you to begin to search for a few blogs that you would consider high
quality in nature because of their usefulness to you as a classroom teacher. If
you take a look at http://www.writerswrite.com/blogging/links.htm where you'll
find a long list of blog related resources. From there, I went to Search Tools
and then to Blog Hop searched the term "education" and came up with "Little Miss
Teacher" -ideas and resources for the primary school teacher at ( I know I promised I'd take this one out....I lied urrr changed my mind sounds better, doesn't it? I'll add another though. )
http://littlemissteacher.blogspot.com/, and the Annick LIVEbrary at
Bloghttp://annickpress.blogspot.com/ where you'll find lesson plans as well as
other education related links.

The two sites mentioned above were found easily enough. I tried to (as I always
will) find examples that would appeal to teachers of different subjects at
different levels, at least until I get to know you and can zero in on what you
teach.


Deanna is interested in history and I know of a very rich resource that she could use supplement her lessons. Although not a blog alone the site (see blog roll link upper right), it contains some very well done podcasts that could be easily downloaded and played for students. Just for you I loaded a sample, the Battle of Lexington" onto MEC's server and you can get it by going to http://cgi.mec.edu/~groves/hp30_battle_of_lexington.mp3.

http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

http://thwt.org/



Rhonda, I hope you'll find some "paydirt" in some of these blogs on Reading:

http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs

http://readingyear.blogspot.com/

http://wordpress.com/tag/teaching-reading/




These are for our "Queens of Guidance":

Berlin High School, Berlin, CT http://www.berlinwall.org/blog/

http://nhsguidance.blogspot.com/

http://www.thehighschoolblog.com/

http://www.kearsarge.org/11122062815485913/site/default.asp

http://www.uscollegesearch.org/blog/parentscounselors/how-high-school-guidance-counselors-can-help-your-teen/



These are for the "Tech Heads" (term used affectionately as one who proudly once was and still is, I guess)

http://teachertipstraining.suite101.com/article.cfm/science_blogs_in_high_and_middle_school_classes

http://technicaleducator.com/blog/




This blog (http://thinkerslink.wordpress.com/) is published at Wordpress. Its
author is Henry Torrormeo, the colorful and somewhat zany librarian at Haverhill
High School. The blog is well done and he has spent a lot of time cultivating
its readership, often sending out mass internal emails touting its daily
features.

Dig in and enjoy.

Eric

01 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to "Using Weblogs as Teaching Tools". I'm so glad to be teaching this
course and it's going to be nice to see some familiar faces as well as get to
know some new ones.

This post is also a dry run of an essential, but only one of a number of ways
that we will communicate during the next 10 weeks or so.

The class will meet at 4:00 PM on the following days: Tuesdays, Sept. 30, Oct.
14, 21, Nov. 18, Dec. 9 as well as virtually on 5 other Tuesdays TBD in class.

In addition to our actual class time in MEC's lab, we'll be meeting virtually in
my office in TI's virtual professional development center (more about that
later) or via blogs (yours and mine) and email.

Near the beginning of the first session, I'm going to try to learn about your
interest in blogging-for your research or for publishing your material whether
for your students or staff to enjoy. You also might be interested in having your students publish the work they accomplish in you courses.

Before I forget, I want to give you my email address. It is egroves@comcast.net
and you'll find the addresses of your fellow students in first email's header.

More later on...

Eric