Brandy Wesson and Chelsea Ellison

 “We use technology to liberate ourselves from mundane robotic tasks that lack any sort of creative drive or purpose. A robot can memorize 100 vocabulary words. The question is now, what do we do with these words? Do we use them for creative expression, or do we let them collect dust in the deep recesses of our brain? Technology is not here to make us lazy, or to avoid basic communication skills, but it is here to make us think critically, solve problems, collaborate, communicate, create, and ideate.”  Cohen, M. (2014, May 7). The Invisible iPad: It’s Not About the Device. Retrieved January 27, 2015, from

 Think of technology as a tool for learning instead of learning the technology itself.  Have a tool for students to use to communicate knowledge and share and increase that knowledge outside of the classroom. (Standards based)  Have a way to communicate with parents that will reach more parents than traditional websites.

 Do you have any content that you want students to learn?  Do you want them to communicate that knowledge to you? To others?  Do you want to be able to see and assess that knowledge?  Do you want the students to receive feedback from you? From others?  How do you currently do this?

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 Students experience an increase sense of worth.  Students time on an educational task increases.  Students are communicating!  The walls of the classroom are removed!  More standards are met!

 Let’s brainstorm how to make this work with different technology set-ups.

  Free features  Safe(r)  Teacher can control privacy settings  Students can receive and provide feedback

 How can you use KidBlog to… “make us think critically, solve problems, collaborate, communicate, create, and ideate”

  Articles grades K-12 that are cross-curricular. You may use for the articles only or you may make a class and have students complete tasks (including comment on articles) that you may track.