Articles on blogging as an educational tool:

• http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/bloggingtech/index.htm
• http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/02/35blogs.h26.html

Some student blog sites:

• http://www.classblogmeister.com/
• http://learnerblogs.org
• http://www.21classes.com

Examples of student blogs:

(See Real District Blogging Examples)

Examples of educator blogs:

• For parent/student information
  http://www.mabryonline.org/blogs/
• For administration
  http://ghsprincipal.edublogs.org/
• For professional development:
  http://speedofcreativity.org
  http://www.davidwarlick.com/2cents
  http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.com
  http://www.readwriteweb.com

My favorite site for setting up teacher blogs: http://www.edublogs.org

Here I am, back at TCEA one year after creating this, my first blog, and there are only 6 (this makes 7) posts. What can I say…I have no excuse. I was so fired up when I created this that I was SURE I’d be making weekly, if not daily, contributions to the blogosphere, but I guess real life got in the way.

That’s not to say that I haven’t learned a LOT from and about blogging in the past year. I have become a blog-lurking junky. I have subscribed to several educational blogs that I read religiously. In fact, I use Bloglines to subscribe to my favorites, and I installed the Bloglines Notifier so I can read them as soon as their authors update them!

This has been an amazing year in the advance of technology in education…or at least I’m more aware of the advances. Social bookmark sites such as del.icio.us have changed the way we share resources; flickr has changed the way we share photos; wikis such as pbwiki have changed the way we collaborate; not to mention video sharing and podcasting! Wow!

Some days I feel like a sponge, just soaking up as much knowledge as I can. Other days, I feel like the sponge is saturated. But every day, I am amazed by the huge community of teachers and learners, adults and children, who are taking part in this vast world which has become known by some as Web 2.0.

So, here I am, back at TCEA a year later, making a new commitment to be more than a lurker; to become a contributor. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m posting my first entry in this blog using my Palm Treo 650. If you are reading this, it worked!

I am sitting in the registration area of the 2006 TCEA conference, having just finished facilitating the first of many workshops for the week. If this one was any indication, it’s going to be an incredible week with lots of new resources!! It was called Now You’re Blogging: Make Your Own Free Professional Blogfolio, presented by Dr. Karen French of the University of Texas in Austin.

Now I’m putting the training to practice by creating my first educational blog. I’ve played around with blogging before on a personal level, but haven’t really taken the time to develop anything worthwhile to anyone but me. Lots of possibilities for the uses of blogging in K-12 education have been swimming around in my head, however, and I see this as the first step.

Student electronic portfolios? Motivation for writing assignments? Peer sharing? Cultural exchanges? Hmmm….where will this lead?