BP11_2009103_Web Tools 2.0 - blogmeister.com

Blogging is both individual and collaborative. It allows for students’ self-expression and stimulates peer discussion in and out of class. My students struggle with writing and limit the amount of writing they create to the minimum required. I think that blogging will be motivating and students will be more likely to write longer and maybe even more often.

Classblogmeister.com is designed for education. It allows users to search by location or by grade level in order to locate a teacher’s blog. A teacher can organize blogs so that you can track students’ blogs and is password protected from public access, so only students in that class can read the blog. It also allows users or authors to read comments posted to the blog.

I would use this site for a variety of uses. First, I would use the site as a way for students to search other schools and comment and learn about how it is being used on other classes. I think this would help students to understand the impact of their own writing on the web. Then, I would set up student blogs and I would use blogging as a way to continue class discussion. As students become familiar with blogging I would use it to provide students with open-ended science prompts. Then I would use it to provide and share resources that further class topics.

David Warlick, the creator of blogmeister and author of several web 2.0 books, has several tutorials available on YouTube, an instructional pdf, and his own website and class blog available online. He makes learning classblogmeister easy, however accessing blogmeister does require school registration and approval.

Helpful tools:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAHPXHLDZlc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9aBUTx4_g&feature=related

http://classblogmeister.com/blogmeister_instructions.pdf

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Books:

Classroom Blogging: 2nd Edition

Redefining Literacy 2.0: Second Edition