What it is: Edublogs is a free educational blog environment for K-12. You can easily share work, class notes, and pictures online. You can also make private blogs for student use only.
How to use: Teachers can use Edublogs to stay connected with students, parents, and other teachers. Use as a newsletter for parents, share photos and student work, post school documents (never again hear: "I lost the directions page"), show off projects, post a message and assign students to comment at least once, assign collaborative group projects online with an easy way to track student progress, or simply post links that support your curriculum for students to use.
Students can use Edublogs to communicate ideas, photos, class notes, and improve their writing and typing skills. After a field trip, ask students to comment on one thing they learned. Ask a "deep question" and have students respond. Post a scenario for students to react to. Have students click Comment to give not only the answer to a Math problem, but also a step-by-step description of how they reached their answer.
Tip 1: When setting up your blog, you may want to start out with a strict Moderation setting: under Settings, click Discussion Settings. You can adjust the Moderation to An Administrator must always approve a comment. Although you will have a lot of work approving comments at the beginning, once students understand what is and is not acceptable, you can choose a more relaxed setting. Remember, your blog is representing your classroom and school to The World!
What it is: Google Reader is a free RSS program that allows you to keep track of the latest postings from your fav news sites and blogs. Great to use on your own class blog or to keep you up on your own personal or professional blogs. As easy as checking your email!
How to use: You'll need a free Google account. To subscribe to a blog, paste the feed url into the Add Subscription box. Click on Discover for a listing of feeds of blogs with similar topics to your current subscriptions.
Tip 1: Sort your blogs into folders - Personal and School related (you could also sort into folders called Science, Writing, Technology, etc.).
