Do you have teachers’ feedback yet on whether blogs would serve their needs better than regular websites? Our college is always looking for technologies on distance learning.
Wow. I’m glad you got so much out of my site, Romy. Thanks for the encouragement, too.
As for your question… there are several advantages for teachers…
– The ease of updating content on their site, including instructional information, assignments, calendar information, etc.
– The ease of posting attached files (such as syllabi and work sheets etc.)
– The ease of posting pictures and other multimedia content on their site
– The ease of hosting an interactive site on which students and parents can leave comments and interact not only with the teacher, but with each other.
– The ease of applying (and changing!) visually appealing designs
– Automatic archiving
– In a phrase, a Content Management System
– And all of this with no programming skills, and no money, needed.
In my humble opinion (and others have said this), the day of the home page has come and gone. There is no reason a teacher with no programming knowledge would want a home page instead of a blog.
Hmm.. I think I just wrote something I should include in part 4 of my instructional posts on my site. :)
The Orange County Department of Education ran a "web institute" last summer, which focused on creating a class blog. One of the by products was this amazing projec, which is not a class blog, but a blog for a specific parent/child reading project:
http://parentchild.blogspot.com/
I linked to it from my site, but see Will Richardson’s Weblogg-Ed.com for lists of teacher blogs, and many stories about successful uses of blogs in the classroom.
Note: his "practices" link is better than his "educators’ weblogs" link, which takes you to his bloglines account, which might be a bit confusing if you aren’t familiar with the tool.
I hope this helps!
-Mark
