BP1_2009101_Educational Uses for Blogs

Ebscohost lent itself to a great resource article called Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis. It was a one-stop-shop as Flierl and Fowler addressed several sites open to educational online communication. I will elaborate on two sites described in this article. I checked out blogsavvy.net. The home page consists of featured posts, a quote of the week, and recent posts. There are also blogging resources found on this page for different blogging needs and uses. By clicking on the Blogging for Education link, many blog resources and user comments are shown about using blogs for education, such as the multi-user blog tools like Drupal, Elgg, Manilla, and WordPress. As an educator, just learning that these tools are out there can be very helpful. Another site listed by Flierl and Fowler was Teachers Teaching Teachers at http://teachersteachingteachers.org/. Teachers collaborate on this blog site to provide insight and feedback to other teachers about their own findings in the classroom through blogs, podcasts, and webcasts. Categories for these blogs and teacher stories are listed on the left-hand side of the website along with archives. Any teacher may join EdTechTalk and participate in the topic of conversation held every Wednesday. The discussion is then posted as a podcast to the blog on Teachers Teaching Teachers. This is a community building network of teachers that want to share and expose others to their findings. I was thoroughly impressed with what these teachers have done and it’s very inspiring, which helps other teachers want to get involved and stay active in the learning process through constant reflection and feedback from peers. I believe this to be the main purpose for using blogs in education.

FLIERL, R., & FOWLER, H. (2007). Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(3), C3. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27362905&site=ehost-live