Blogging Pedagogy

I feel that blogging can be a great tool for me as a teacher and to use for my classroom, depending on what grade and my students development. I found many different blogs that could be very useful for new ideas in the classroom. The few that I chose were blogs that as a teacher I could go to for help. The one I was most impressed with was "Art Lessons for Kids" at http://artlessonsforkids.wordpress.com/. This is a blog for teachers, giving them many different ideas for art lessons. It was great because it gave you different lessons specific for different grades. These ideas were so creative and would be very engaging for the students in the classroom. The most recent post was an art project for textured cities specifically for second graders. She gives great instructions as how to go about these projects and shows lots of pictures which I thought was great to help you further understand her meaning. 

I also feel that these blogs can be used to inform parents and others of what is happening in your classroom as well as homework and what parents can do to help their student in school. I feel with this you need to be careful though, if it is too long and wordy then parents will lose interest and it can become less informative. Although I also feel you need to share enough information that it is worth your time to write as well as the parents time to check it. There is a major balance in achieving this. There were a lot of examples of this that I found. One I liked was Mr. O'Brien's 4th Grade Blog at http://classroom209.blogspot.com/. It was very directed towards the families of his students but had information for the students as well. 

I also feel that these blogs can be used for the students in the classroom. Many of the examples that were provided for this assignment were just that. They were for the students to participate in different assignments and to post their own things. I feel this would need to be for the right age group of students, you could not do this with a goup of preschoolers, but it would definitely work with a classroom of 4th graders. Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337 is a great example of this. I know this is an example that was on our assignment but I was very impressed with this blog. I felt that it really gave the students in the classroom a lot of credit. It had the students videos as well as each of their projects on there and a space for each of their names.