Weblog+Project

What a cool program! I really like how a teacher can create writing prompts and have the students reply using technology. The students also get a chance to read other students' work. The students can access websites and other extra things that you may not have time to do in class. I can see how a weblog would be a great way for students to safely use the internet at home. The teacher could post websites for the students to visit. I'm sure parents would love the fact that their students are learning outside the classroom!

Robyn, you did an outstanding job creating an educational blog using the Edublog platform.(I don't know if you have created a blog before--but I think that most of them operate using the same tools and widgets.) You were successful using a template and building an environment where communication could take place outside of class, and students could extend their learning and write about their adventures.

According to the SupportBlogging.com wiki, blogging empowers students in the following ways:1) Instead of writing as a mechanized approach to empowerment where we learn to write well enough for school and work, we learn to write for life-long learning purposes.2) Writing and blogging and life are intertwined as difficult issues are exposed and dealt with in a transparent community of voices. Although this type of writing entails risk and trust, growth and teamwork naturally result.3) Writing and blogging encourage students' initiative to write, to be engaged at more than just the head level. It involves writing from head and heart. Children often have not learned to do more than live from the heart, while adults have concentrated their efforts on more cerebral approaches. This means adults and children can bridge the gap that exists by writing together, creating a community of writers in their classrooms where there is no pseudo-community, only community where humans write. http://supportblogging.com/Educational+Blogging

Here are some resources about blogging: [] [] (Blogging in the Physics Classroom) [] [] [] [] []

Here are more resources for collaboration: 15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps [] More free tools online []

Interesting! The Whiteboard Reinvented-Dabbleboard []

One of my favorite new tools: VoiceThread (This could easily be used for staff development.) [] Select BROWSE on the toolbar. Select What’s a VoiceThread… and watch the example of how a Voice Thread works. Here is an example of one that my class last year played with: [|http://voicethread.com/?#u1026074]

How about creativity? Make a Word Cloud: Wordle [|www.wordle.net] 52 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom []

Or maybe a Tagxedo:  [|Tagxedo] turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. []