Specific Applications for Blogs

I can think of many ways that Blogs can be a part of classroom instruction. When I am teaching I will have a classroom Blog. The Blog will be used to solicit comments and questions from students as well as a place to share pictures of classroom activities. Some specific ideas I have are:

• Taking pictures of field trips and putting them on the Blog with descriptions and then asking students to comment. Rather than simple asking for comments, I could also ask students to answer a reflective question. It would be fun to have the students take turns being the photographer so that it was their pictures that were on the Blog.
• Asking students to comment or answer reflective questions concerning a story that we might be reading.
• Asking students to do some research and have them briefly describe their findings on the Blog.
• Ask students to comment on the Posts of other students.

As I write these ideas, more ideas continue to pop into my mind. I think once you start a class out on the path of participating on Blogs, they will become more and more involved in its use. Students could even take turns coming up with ideas for Post assignments. I think Blogs have a lot of potential for improving student involvement on assignments. In a Public School setting it will be important to provide access to the Blogs for all students.