The Village Green

Virtual play. Show Rabbit is a blog created by kids where you can create your own rabbit, enter it into contests, and buy and sell rabbits. All of this is built entirely from imagination. There are no actual animals involved. What could your students come up with if given a space like this, some time and guidance, and their own limitless imagination?

http://showrabbit.wordpress.com/

Communication. Mrs. McLaughlin is using her blog to communicate with her students even when school is not in session. This is a great way to connect with her students, gives them an opportunity to get to know each other, and establish a positive culture for her classroom.

http://mrsmclaughlin.edublogs.org/2007/06/14/hello-world/

Blogs are also a great way to facilitate book talks. Students in this example from “Exploring the Gothic for A2″ respond to their readings from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

http://thegothic.edublogs.org/2007/07/02/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/

Blogs also make wonderful repositories for student work. This makes it easy to extend the audience outside of the four walls of the classroom. The Coffey Crew, a blog for a second grade classroom, has a nice collection of presentations students put together hosted on SlideShare.

http://coffeycrew.edublogs.org/category/projects/slide-show/

Blogs can also be used as a calendar. Ms. Dawkins - Language Arts blog informs students of the weekly schedule and due dates for assignments.

http://ldawkins.edublogs.org/

The second blog example I’ve found is to use a blog for pen pals. One class posts to their own blog, and their partner classroom leaves comments. The reverse can also be set up so that each class is commenting on their partner site. Here’s an example from Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Kunc.

http://mrsclintonsclass.edublogs.org/

Blogs have been around for a while now, and seem to be gaining traction in classrooms for everything from student publishing to collaborative group work. I’m going to collect some examples of specific ways that blogs are used and collect all of them with the Edublogs tag. If you know of an innovative use of blogging in education, feel free to add your examples in the comments.

First up is Room 9′ Writing Spot. This site is run entirely by students. The primary use seems to be student journals. Their writing is mostly non-fictional recounts of recent events. First names are used as tags to collect the work of individual students. The intent is to publish student work ‘as-is’ so any corrections for grammar or spelling end up in parentheses. Parents and students are encouraged to comment on the writing so the students can get feedback from an audience that exists outside the classroom.

http://room9writing.blogspot.com/