Will Richardson - Learning with Blogs: Bringing the Read/Write Web into the Classroom

http://weblogged.wikispaces.com/Weblogs+in+schools

Richardson has over twenty years experience as a teacher. He has left teaching to share the message of the power of blogging. He has blogged for over 6 years. He believes that blogging is about building our own learning communities that are available 24/7. Blogging is the most powerful way to do this.

His blog is a place for him to reflect, archive his thinking and to create conversations. This is his curriculum as an adult learner. He has conversations with people around the world.

His blog is http://www.weblogg-ed.com.

How do these technologies change teaching and learning? Our students will need to be successful in participating in networks. Our students will need to be able to read and write in hypertext environments.

What can blogs do for the classroom? Blogs give students a real audience. Writing skills improve. Reading skills improve. There are many possibilities for collaboration.

http://supportblogging.com/Links+to+School+Bloggers

To get into blogging, start reading blogs. The start commenting on other's blogs.

Blogging is most powerful when we "expend a little bit of intellectual sweat." It is powerful when we share a viewpoint and put it out on the Internet for comment.

Possible classroom use: Have students read blogs from very different viewpoints and synthesize the information in their own blog.

Question - how early to start blogging in school? Second graders can blog.

Teachers must understand blogging and model it for the students before asking the students to blog.

Safety Issues: First, the teacher must have a clear reason for blogging (the latest whizzbang is not a good reason). Be transparent. Let administrators and parents know what is proposed. Show everyone involved what the potential problems are and what the response will be. Get parent permission. Have a clear acceptable use policy.

Teachers should read the blog http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/. The Clarence Fisher writes a lot about how his classroom is changing.

Carl Fisch has a blog http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/ which is a resource for teacher professional development.

The connections that can be made outside the classroom is really powerful.

Richardson used RSS to have student blog input come to him. He had a class blog with links to all the student blogs.

Teachers can either moderate or monitor the blogs. The audience can be limited to just the class or school or opened up to the world. Richardson prefers monitoring. He had long conversations with his high school students about safety and security. Clarence Fisher's sixth grade students blog for the world. Richardson has experienced only two incidents cyberbullying.

Blogs provide a great archive of work.

Blogging is most powerful when students see the teacher actively blogging. Then they can see the value of blogging and how it's done.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/blog has good information on setting up blogging in the classroom.

Teachers of younger students some times have the students summit the posting to them first so that they make sure the students are not embarrassed by poor grammar and syntax