Educational uses of blogs?

Using Blogs as a classroom educational too can have some really great uses. I was able research online and easily find numerous websites that discuss the uses of blogs as educational tools. On the Pembina website they list five educational uses for blogs. They are: 1) can take place of a classroom website 2) teachers use the blogs to list internet sites 3) to organize classroom discussions 4) teachers may use them to organize and or summarize class lectures or discussions 5) students may be required to have their own blogs as a part of their class grade or assignment. These are all good suggestions for ways to use blogs to enhance student’s educational experience.
On another website I found out that, Blogs can provide a communication space that teachers can use with their students in order to develop writing, share ideas and or reflect on work being done in the classroom. It seems that blogs would be an excellent use of technology that can enhance, encourage and connect learning for all students at their level of learning. Sense we know that every generation is growing up with more and more technology in their lives it only makes sense to incorporate it into their education. I cannot see how it would hurt but only help in making education work for today’s technology driven students.
Thirdly, I found a website that stated;”In 1997 Jorn Barger coined the phrase Weblog to describe a site that combined links, commentaries, and personal thoughts and essays from the perspective of the Weblog author.” (Campus Technology website, 2008) To me this sounds like another way of getting all types of writing out to others to read. Some where I read that blogging is just online journalism. That really connected the whole idea of blogging for me, online journalism.

link
http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/weblogs/
http://www.pembinatrails.ca/program/technology/uses_of_blogs_in_education.htm
http://campustechnology.com/articles/39247/

Educational Journal Subscription

After looking around a bit I decided to subscribe to the e news letter of "Edutopia" which seems to provide a variety of articles on all kinds of educational topics. this was much more appealing to me than one that is too narrow of topics. I will be much more likely to read the newsletter articles when there are more topics.

link
http://www.edutopia.org/

PPT as an educational tool-reflections and web resources

Power points can be a great educational tool if used correctly. As a technology tool students can use it for many important educational purposes. Although it can become an over used or misused tool.

Personally I have had students use power points as a way to show information they have gathered, presenting it to the class. In the future I hope to broaden what students is it for. For my students who are special education students they need the experiences and practice with the skills and knowledge needed to create power points. Yet taking the time to have students create their power points can be consuming for some, needing a lot of time to complete the tasks needed.

I can see using power points as a way for students to teach each other about topics they are studying in a more interesting and creative way. I can also see that as a teacher I can incorporate more powere points when appropriate into my lessons providing the studnets a more visual learning atmosphere.