Will Richardson has stated FIVE(5) good reasons why he thinks that Blog should be titled the educational technology tool of 2004 in his post. In his words, blogs can provide:
1. Audience
2. Constructivist Learning
3. Collaborative Learning
4. Critical Reading, Thinking and Writing Skills
5. Information Literacy Skills
As presented during the EdTech Award Ceremony 2004, we too believe that the potential of blogs has yet to be unleashed, especially in the context of Singapore education.
I am not sure if anyone here has explored wiki, but looking at the online tools that we have experimented so far, web page, email, forum, none of which is so easy to use to faciliate teaching and learning. Best of all, blog empowers our students with ownership, the blog itself, as well as learning.
Merriam-Webster #1 Word of the Year for 2004
Guess what? Merriam-Webster Online has proclaimed the word Blog as the #1 Word of the Year for 2004!
Check it out here.
[Soruce: Ed-Tech Insider]
A topic a week …
Just another fine example of the use of blog for teaching and learning. Jason Reagin has created a blog for his EL class.
Instead of maintaing their own blogs, students are required to visit their teacher’s blog to practice EL thru posting comments on the topics posted in the blog.
Development of Blogs from the WWW perspective
Though as educators we are most interested in edublogs, it is also good for us to be updated on how blogs have been evolving in the global scene.
Read this article “Web of Influence” by Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrellto find out more.
2nd EduBlog Workshop
This morning, some 20 teachers from four schools attended our workshop held in Beatty Secondary School Computer Lab 3. In the short 3-hours, teachers are introduced to blogs, as well as had a hands-on session on the use of Blogger.com. The day’s programme ended with a break out discussion on the possibilities of introducing blogs into the teaching and learning of their various subject areas.
Softcopy for the presentation and handouts can be downloaded here:
1. Presentation slides (EdTech Awards version)
2. Blogger HOWTO
3. Bloglines.com HOWTO
4. WinXP IME 3.0 Chinese Input Installation Guide