2. Blogs in the Classroom Richard Norman

3. Purpose To determine the impact Blogs, both positively and negatively, have in relationship to teachers, students as well as the value of Blogs in the classroom setting.

4. Overview  Need for Blogs  Research  Development  Commercialization  Special Features  Benefits

5.  Need for Blogs  How Blogs Can Serve Teachers and Student  Provide instant communication between teachers and students  Serve as a personal on line journal  Provide information to parents, community members, administration and other teachers

6.  Research  Blogs allow for publication, which in turn scaffolds a learner for knowledge construction (Olson, 1994)  Blogs provide opportunities for active learning, increase higher-order thinking skills (Ferdig, Rehler, 2004)  Technology of blogs allow for students to establish personal and intellectual ownership of new concepts (Oshea, 1999)

7.  Research, continued  With the use of blogs, students take ownership of their work  Blogging allows for a 3 step process  Scouring  Filtering  Posting (Blood, 2002)  Blogging will allow students to enculturate into a community (Lave and Wenger, 1991 )  Because of the nature of blogs, students can develop diverse perspectives

8.  Development of Blogs  Possible Problems Which May Occur  Software compatibility with school servers  Teacher training on the use of blogs  Students ability to access blogs  Percentage of teachers incorporating blogs

9.  Commercialization  Interface allows you to add content, pictures and links quickly and easily. Whether you know a little bit about technology or a lot, you can go from blank screen to live blog in minutes  Ultimate in blog management tools, allowing customized design, moderate comments, decison to display ads, and much more  Blogs are search-engine optimized. In addition, valuable services such as Google Site Maps, a PubSubhubbub hub, search-engine friendly URLs and site structure are available

10.  Special Features  Graphic Designers can create design templates that make your blog look sharp, professional, and creative. Customized templates of infinite number can be created, as well as coding one’s own  Data Centers can aide in spam prevention to comment control to powerful back-end data protection, keeping uploaded blog content safe as well as offering exceptional reliability, uptime and system performance  Data Centers will offer backend technology to accommodate needs, ease of use matched with sophisticated functionality and high-traffic capacity

11.  Benefits  Allow for daily student/teacher contact  Open up valuable resources for students  Student directed learning can take place  Allows for students to increase writing skills  Teachers can provide multiple links to internet resources

12.   1995 First Wiki for Portlan Pattern Repository  1997 J. Barger introduces Blogs for robot wisdom  1999 Bloggers.com established  2003 International conference of business use of blogs takes place in U.S.  2003 Harvard Weblogs Project begins  Timeline for Blogs

13. 19951997199920032005 Use of Blogs in Millions 5 10 15 20 25 30  Use of Blogs

14.  By incorporating blogs into the classroom, this can enhance student skills in writing and increase knowledge. This type of technology can provide students with the needed tools that can prepare them for the ability to be life long learners.  Conclusion

15.  Blood, R. 2002. The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing. Ferdig, R. and L. R’ehler. 2004. “Student Engagement in Electronic Discussions: Examining Online Discourse in Literacy Pre-Service Classrooms.” Journal of Research on Technology in Education. Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D. 1994. The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. New York: Cambridge University Press. O’Shea, T. 1999. Birkbeck Web Forum on Learning and Teaching. Online: www.bbk.ac.uk/asd/view/view02.html. Reference Page