Taking the first step

Blogs are very powerful tools to use in education, and I’m glad to see more and more teachers taking the time to setup and develop blogs for their classroom. I actually just introduced blogging to my seventh grade geography students this year, and I’ve got nothing but positive responses.

There are so many different things that teachers can do with blogs, like publishing homework for students that are absent (which is mostly cut and paste), enhancing the classroom experience by adding supplemental videos and graphics, and especially by creating a dialogue that is unhindered by the constraints and pressures of the school setting.

Teachers can also collaborate with each other on projects online which basically take the geography of location out of the equation, freeing up more time to concentrate on the bones of the material. For example, I may be teaching in the same school as Mrs. Denson but we don’t share a common lunch or planning period to collaborate on projects and this will allow us to communicate more freely.

Thanks for adding me as a guest contributor to your blog.

Mike McCormick