Blog.com is a free blogging platform that allows for multi-author blogs, themes, and other features. It can be used in classrooms by creating blogs for communicating class information to parents, posting daily lessons for absent students, and having students write blog posts. Benefits include being easy to use, free, and allowing more students to participate. Potential downsides are that it is time consuming to set up, has a learning curve, and could enable cyberbullying if not monitored.
2. WHAT IS BLOG.COM?
• Blog.com is one of many free publishing platforms
available on the Internet today
• “A blog is your best bet for a voice among the online
crowd. It’s a personal website, packed with features, as
easy to use as your e-mail.” (Blog.com, 2012)
• Blog.com offers users a variety of different features
including multi-author blogs, service integration, a range
of over 100 themes, multimedia support, privacy settings,
and more.
4. IN THE CLASSROOM
• Create a class blog/website to communicate class/school information with
parents. Post field trip information, field trip forms, classroom guidelines,
and more.
• Create a blog with daily lessons listed for students who are sick or away.
• Use a blog to show parents what their child is doing in school
• Create a blog where every student in the class posts about a favourite
vacation, activity, season, etc. Use it as a tool for creative writing.
• Use a blog to teach writing and spelling to young elementary students.
• Create a blog to post assignments, handouts, and notices.
• Use a blog as a place for students to post weekly reflections on what they
learned from a particular lesson/assignment
5. IN THE CLASSROOM CONT.
Those were just some of the ways you can integrate blogs into
your classroom. There are so many other ways in which you can
effectively use blogs in the classroom. In order for blogs to be
effective they must be beneficial to student learning. Before
creating a blog in your classroom determine how it will be used to
meet learning outcomes. Don’t just use the tool because it is
something new and easily accessible.
6. BENEFITS
• Fairly easy to use and set up
• Free to use
• Invites more students into the conversation – students who may be too shy
to speak up in class can express themselves through a different medium
• Provides a “safe” mechanism for introducing students to social media
• Extends conversations beyond the classroom
• Encourages collaboration and communication
7. WEAKNESSES/SHORTFALLS
• Time Consuming – initially I thought I would create a site using blog.com
to present my information, but shortly after I started creating the site I
became frustrated with the settings and controls and decided against it.
• Learning curve – while I do think blog.com is fairly user-friendly, it takes
time to get used to and to become comfortable with the different settings
and controls.
• Potential for cyberbullying to occur if using as a tool within the classroom
• Privacy issues
