10 More Ways to Use Blogs in Your Classroom

Why are blogs such a big deal?  Use this video to explain to parents why your kids are blogging, and how it all works.

• Our school is on a mission to save paper!  A blog would be a great place to post a writing prompt for the week, and let the kids answer it in their journals.
• How about a collaborative story?  Start a story and have each student add something to it.
• Use it as a place where students can submit their ideas about the classroom or projects.  For example, my students sometimes give me "tips" about how I could manage certain classroom situations.  There, they could post where I can view before anyone else and decide whether to post or not.
• Use it to let students reflect on field trips, projects, or school happenings.  What was your favorite part of the field trip?  What is one thing you learned about our community?  Did your family attend the spaghetti dinner?  If so, which part did you/they like the best?
• Students love to recommend books to each other!  This or Edmodo might be a good place for that.  Dear Suzie:  I read Wayside School and thought of you.  I think you would like this book because you like funny stories.
• Parent feedback is important!  Use the blog for parents to ask questions or comment on your posts. You can also post items like this video to help parents understand why you blog.
• Book studies work great with blogs!  If the staff at your school wants to study a book together, think about a blog.  Our school did a book study on diversity a few years ago.  We did it online together and posted comments about each chapter.
• Administrators can use blogs to give information and solicit feedback from staff.  Maybe we could give feedback on things like "does anyone have any ideas on where we could store the books that will are in the new teacher's classroom."  Many times we have small issues that we don't have time to discuss in a staff meeting.  This would be a good place to go to discuss.
• Administrators can post informational articles or videos for staff.  There are articles that we are often asked to read or comment on.  It would be nice to see that posted in a place like this for us to read on our own time.
• Use blogs to link students to appropriate websites that you want them to visit.  Authors often have great websites with interactive games, etc.

There are many great articles about using blogs in the classroom.  Here are a few I liked.

Using Blogs to Integrate Technology in the Classroom

Educational Blogging

Blogs In Education