So far I have really enjoyed this week's assignments. The thing I learned the most was about all of the different blog spots there are on the web. I obviously use Blogspot for this course, but I have also used it in conjunction with my school band department web site. We, the other band directors and I, do not update it enough though. I am disappointed by this but hope to start the blog again soon.
I also have signed up for an EduBlog account and want to begin using this in my middle school and possibly my elementary school programs. This site is a bit more safe for my younger students. This site is really well designed for schools, teachers and students, with the focus being on student safety.
I was thinking that I can have a monthly post for my younger students and encourage them, at the beginning, to read the post and comment on the topic. This topic would be focused on music and most likely band, but as long as the students read the post, or view a link that I use, this might be a good way for them to earn a bit of extra credit and start looking to blogs as a possible learning tool.
I think that great that you have already started blogging with in your department. What type of topics would have your student comment on? I worry that the comments would be too bland. But I suppose that is an issue of question development.
ReplyDeleteJosh - That's great that you have a dept blog. I would also love to do this, especially to share some of the tech tools with other teachers or "best practices" or a SWOT analysis of a tool but I haven't done this yet. I just don't have time to do it right now. If I start that blog so many other things will go by the wayside; I'd much rather write a fun blog than correct some papers so I'm not even going to tempt myself...probably until I'm done with this program. The extra time I spend on homework I can put towards writing a blog. :) Good luck on your dept blog!
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