Serendipity35

I use an open source blog software for this blog, and the "commercial-but-free" Blogger software for a poetry blog. I also have created blogs on other sites - mostly just to experiment with the software - as with nes I have on Eduspaces, VOX, Xanga, and even MySpace. One site that I probably should have investigated earlier is Edublogs.

Edublogs was started in 2005 in Australia as a blogging platform and community for educators. It has grown to host over a hundred thousand blogs. There's even an enterprise blogging solution called Edublogs Campus that might be a good solution for your educational institution.

There's a recent post on their site called "10 ways to use your edublog to each."

It's a good list of educational uses of a blog. You can read their full text, but here's my take on the list.

1. Use a blog to post materials and resources - especially useful to those of you who have no access to network/server storage for your classes that will be accessible by your students from school and home.

2. Host online discussions - having students respond to blog posts and discuss topics without a CMS. AS a teacher, you can receive emails when comments are made & you can manage and edit all responses.

3 & 4. Create a class publication - do a class newsletter, offer parent information, a site for a club or group. Students can be contributors, authors and editors.

5. Get your students blogging - your blog can be a "hub" for their work and a place where they can easily visit other blogs. Teachers of writing should be writers themselves. Teachers who ask students to blog, should be blogging.

6. Share your lesson plans - That may seem radical to some teachers - to open source your plans.

7. Integrate multimedia - embed online video, multimedia presentations, slideshows without CDS, coding knowledge.

8. As an organizing tool - clubs, activities, student government, single events...

9. Get feedback - You CAN allow anonymous commenting on your blog (or force all comments through moderation) but if you're not afraid or even welcome feedback...

10. Create a fully functional website - blogs can look like multimedia rich websites. No one says you have to do all the comments and typical blogging functions. (Though I suspect that if you use a blog for a few months, you will WANT to use those functions!)