A Note About Blogs

I've looked at both Blogger and Wordpress to begin a blog. I've not been a big fan of Wordpress. Blogger is a lot more intuitive for me, and I appreciate the straightforward approach it offers to uploading pictures and videos.

I have made blogs using Blogger's templates as well as using templates provided online. There are several places to download templates to personalize blog formats, and I've found that Wordpress offers more opportunities for people to personalize their blogs, but those people need to have a fairly large working knowledge of HTML, which I don't. I know I can learn, but it is a bit easier for me to choose a template I like and upload it. There are several developers who are creating templates for blogs for a price, and people seem willing to pay for something to help their blog stand out. If someone has a working knowledge of Photoshop and banners, they can create their own template using Blogger's backgrounds and their own banner.

As an English teacher, I think that the use of blogs seems quite easy to introduce and utilize. In the past, I've asked that students blog about books and ideas for essays. There are problems that come with blogging, though. Just last week in the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) newsletter I receive, there was an article that warned teachers and school districts to be careful about using blogs. The article focused on teachers who blog and endanger their jobs, but every teacher can foresee problems that could come about because of blogging. It's imperative that, if students use blogs in the K-12 arena, teachers protect their identities as well as their locations and other personal information.

This year, I could use a classroom blog to keep track of ideas of our yearbook as well as important strategies for creating a yearbook. I wouldn't upload pictures, but I could share photography tips with students and ask them to post their interview notes. This approach would make it much easier to sift through all of that information than the paper method we use now. Using a blog in yearbook class to keep up with issues in class and to use as a reference tool would meet the second NETS-S: Communication and Collaboration. Acquiring and gathering information in order for students to learn from one another can be quite transformative. Blogs are a wonderful tool, and I can and should make good use of them in my classrooms.