As part of our district’s recent technology symposium, I was asked to present a short seminar on “Blogging: Enhancing Instruction.” Last year I was asked to present on a similar topic, focusing on how blogs could be used in the classroom. The seminar was a success, but I quickly found that participant goals ranged from learning what a blog was to exploring new ways to utilize blogging in the classroom to technical concerns with setting up a blog.
Taking what I learned from last year, this year’s seminar was designed as a largely-independent guided exploration into the aspects of blogging of greatest personal interest. Taking a page from my Twitter-network brethren, I set up a Box.Net site which broke up the seminar into four main areas:
- Student Blogs
- Educator Blogs
- Blogging Platforms
- Blog Implementation
Allowing participants to work through areas of greatest interest not only provided each participant with an opportunity to focus on their individual goals, but also allowed me to better wander around the room assisting and discussing with participants as needed. Not only that, the feedback mechanism on TodaysMeet opened up discussions on other technology appropriate for classroom use, a conversation which is still continuing almost a month later!
You can find the presentation at http://box.net/IHSBlog.