Hi everyone!

Today in technology class I learned how to start a blog. We followed step-by-step instructions to get our blogs set up and I was surprised at how quickly it all happened. It was interesting to see how long the confirmation emails took to be sent out; our whole class had to wait about ten minutes before we were able to finish setting up our sites! I am still in the process of setting up my site and making it look pretty with pictures, videos and other extra links but it is definitely trickier than I anticipated. There is lots of little things to sort it out and I am perfectionist so I am having some troubles. I will keep you updated on how the remainder of my set up goes.

I am guessing you’re probably wondering what this blog will be about! So here it goes.. I will be using this blog to reflect on different educational technologies and to share various inquiry projects with you! For example, in my music class I will be teaching myself how to play the piano and using this blog to share my progress through videos. It will definitely be an interesting experience so please stay tuned!

Blogs are a great tool in school classrooms, however, I think blogs would be most effectively used in a middle years classroom. This is because it can be quite challenging to set up and use the blog. Students need to have strong self regulation and problem solving skills and they need to be confident working individually without direct supervision of the teacher Blogs could be used in classrooms to facilitate personalized inquiry projects. Blogging is a fun and unique way for students to share their thoughts and research with their classmates. One thing that is important to remember is that here are many privacy considerations that need to be talked about before introducing it to students. On the other hand, blogs allow students to work at their own pace, students can write as much or as little as needed and then they have the opportunity to use secondary resources to support their research and share their knowledge.

I’ve always wanted to create a blog and I am so excited to go on this blogging journey with all of you. Talk to you next week!

Cheers!

Carly