U.S. K-12 Teachers Use Blogs In The Classroom

The first article I read was In the Classroom, Web Logs Are the New Bulletin Boards . This article discussed how blogs or web logs are changing the classroom setting. Mrs. Dudiak , a second grade teacher in Frederick County, Md., found that her classroom web logs were much more beneficial than her typical group discussions or personal journals. One way she uses web logs is for her students to post what they saw and learned on a recent field trip to a Native American farm. She also noted that her typically quiet students were much more vocal online than in the class. Mrs. Dudiak makes note that "blogging is a different form of writing" and that even though the students are expected to proofread they are not held to the same grammatical rules as written work. The focus of blogging should be more on the content than anything else.

The second article that I read was Blogging from the Classroom, Teacher Seek Influence, Risk Trouble . Although this article gave some examples of how blogging can be used as an arena for teachers to communicate with one another to voice their frustrations within their school, classroom management ideas or lesson plans, I found that the meat of it was in regards to how it can affect a teacher's career if not used properly. Kilian Betlach, a languages arts teacher in Chicago, started a blog anonoymously as "TMAO" . Betlach is only one of many young teachers opening this discussion. Alexander Russo, a former parochial school teacher, notes that teacher blogs "raise important issues and give the rest of us a peek into a world that we see and hear about rarely or only anecdotally through the media." The author of this article, Eddy Ramirez, makes the statement that teacher blogs allow us to really see what is going on in our schools instead of just focusing on standardize test scores. I believe that both Russo and Ramirez are onto the same idea - passing first hand knowledge onto others can certainly open eyes to situations otherwise swept under the rug and perhaps "galvanize people to action." This article also goes on to warn those teachers blogging to exercise caution and to be aware that even though we all have free speech, courts have been ruling in the favor of schools so that they can reprimand teachers if their posts disrupted school operations. One of many notable links I ran into during this research was entitled Classroom 2.0. It gives wonderful YouTube links to 100 of the best YouTube Videos for Teachers.