BLOGGING = ON-LINE JOURNALING

We can just pretend that it is Tuesday.

Helpful Tidbit of the day!

BLOGGING.... it is super fun and easy.  Take note of the profile picture that I selected.  It is a word cloud containing ways that people have described their first experience with creating a blog.  Words like EASY, FUN, SIMPLE, and CREATIVE are listed. Blogger.com provides FREE sites to all users.  There are many, many other sites available for use.  This is just my preference.  After setting up an account, you can simply start typing immediately.  I honestly created my first post in about 5 minutes.  As a teacher, I understand that with blogging there are three primary concerns.
1.  Security..... We do not want the world to read everything that our students have to say.  So, this site allows for you as the administrator of a blog to be able to monitor postings before they go live.  This will prevent any questionable or off-topic content. Viewership can also be limited to your class members only.
2.  Privacy.....If you do not want students in your class to use their real name you can assign them a number or secret name for them to use as their screen name.  Of course, you will need to know who-is-who for grading purposes.
3.  Time....Reading all of the post will be required by you if this is something that you so choose to do.  If you give it a shot, I think that you will be hooked.  Think of BLOGGING as on-line journaling.  This will definately be easier to read than their handwriting.


Requirements:

1. You  create a blog asking your students one thoughtful question in regards to something that you are discussing in class. Make sure that you set the privacy setting to only allow your selected group to have access.
2. E-mail your students the link to the site that you just created.
3. Communicate to your students what will be required of them.  EX:  one original thought and one reply to someone else's posting.
4. Set a deadline for posting an entry. (just like a due date for any other assignment)

ENJOY!!

I am really curious about your reactions to this.  Please fill in your thoughts below.