A perfect example of how a teacher may utilise a blog for communication with students, parents and even ex-students can be found at Mr Wright’s Class.
In it he has everything from spelling words to pictures of field trips to appeal for parents help. By keeping an account of assignments, events etc, parents are kept informed of the happenings in class. This is a great way for communication. Go take a look.
Bloglines.com – for monitoring of (blog) site updates
To stay informed whenever a site updates its information, subscribe to its RSS feeds using Bloglines.com.
If you need some help on bloglines.com, a quick guide of bloglines.com has been created by Alex Halavais.
RSS , Getting started
Will Richardson in his article Getting Started with RSS urged all to take up this great teaching tool.
RSS, short for Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary is seen being used more and more widely. Besides searching a site for an orange XML button for its feed, another more convenient way is to switch to the newly released Firefox browser (assuming you are using Internet Explorer). Whenever you surf to a site providing RSS feed, Firefox will indicate to you with an orange RSS tag at the right-hand bottom corner of the window.
Writing With Web Logs
Another interesting article that summarizes blogs and its advantages so well.
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2003/02/blogs.html
Particularly like this part:
Golub, who is also associate professor of English education at the University of South Florida, teaches future educators three central principles about encouraging student authorship: “Students will write when they have something to say, when they have an audience, and when they get feedback.”
Read the “The Challenge of Assessment” section if you need ideas on assessment.