Monday, February 9, 2009

Using Blogs in the K-12 Classrooms



The teachers at East Orange, New Jersey have developed a blog site called Scholastic Community that allows all K-12 teachers in East Orange to be in direct contact and receive feedback from students, parents and the community. The home page is a message board that tells exactly how to get where you need to go and a list of blogs that have been posted. It has a message board for teachers and parents and a second message board for kids.
This particular site also posts teachers, educational tools, announcements and a most interesting program called Read 180. It allows every student from the community that is a member of the Read 180 program to share their experiences and there successes with other members. It also allows them to post their recent achievements in both teaching and learning. This is definitely a site that every teacher should take a look at. http://community.scholastic.com/scholastic?category.id=TeacherBlogs

At Butlerville Elementary school they have a very successful blog site stemming mainly from a
very interesting program that embodies all aspects of education. This particular site is called escrapbooking. The E in escrapbooking stands for electronic, educational, engaging, expressions. This allows students to reflect on ideas and share perspectives using process and product. It is a creative way to determine if a student has met standards and provides concrete evidence of a teachers performance. Escrapingbooking is a way to combine journals and logs with visual aids such as pictures, video, audio, etc. to evaluate a students performance. This is a creative way of combining old school learning with today's technology so students learn but also have a fun time doing it. http://escrapbooking.com/basics/index.htm

1 comment: