"Scholastic for "Top 20 Teacher Blogs"

• What is the URL of the blog?  

http://regurgitatedalphabits.blogspot.com/

• What is the title of the blog?

REGURGITATED ALPHA BITS

• Does the title of the blog provide information about its content?

No it doesn't, it's just only a metaphoric title, but there are two lines below the title that explain a litle bit what is the blog about.

• What is the name of the person maintaining the blog?

The name of this person is Edna Lee

• What subjects does the blog author teach?

She's a elementary teacher. she teaches all the subjects.

• What is the main purpose/function/objective of the blog? 

The author of this blog tell daily stories that happen in the school with the students, teachers, parents, etc. She wants to share personal experiences about her job and how much she loves her students. This blog is an example of what happen everyday in the school.

• How does the blog make the learning experience more effective? 

The experience is more effective because you can see and read how is the teacher's life in the school and how she interact with  her students also you can find in this blog many different ideas for the learning process.

• Is the blog written in a readable manner--free of grammar or spelling issues, etc? 

Yes,  the writing is very clear and when you read you can realize that is a standard and very familiar language , and this makes possible the reader to understand.

• What can learn from this blog to apply to the creation and maintenance of your own blog? 

The way this blog is organized and also this blog allows the readers to share it in many different social networks like facebook, twitter, and I think that's very important and I can take this as an example of how to create and organize my blog, also it has images. The way she writes is also a good example of how to make the reading easy to understand and makes your experience as a reader enjoyable.

Chapter Four “Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All”

Here we can find all the information about wikis and how we use this in the schools, learning and teaching process.

A wiki is a website where people can come and edit the content of the website.  It can be a public wiki where anyone can edit the content or it can be a private site where only people with passwords can edit the site.

One of the most famous wikis is Wikipedia.  With everyone editing the site you would think that the information could be compromised.  And with most sites it is a good idea to verify the information with other sources.  One concern was that some people would intentionally put in false information.

One important thing in this chapter is the usage of wikis in the classroom . Wikis can be used to publish by teachers and students.  Wikis differ from weblogs in that anyone can edit the page.  With weblogs people coming to the page can leave comments without changing the content of the weblog.    When teaching with wikis  there are skills being taught that students will use in their lives.  “In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they are also learning how to develop many skills like he ability of correct things.

Chapter Three "Weblogs Get Started"

In this chapter the author make emphasis in how we can implement the weblogs in the classroom and we can also find the steps of how to create a blog.

The author explains all the thing about blog safety and how to make sure that you have all the permission to create a blog.And the most important things let the students know that weblogs is an important educational tool and it can provide them many opportunities for learning and teaching.

When students publish they have a desire to have their work recognized.  Students need to know who the intended audience is and how to keep themselves safe.  Teachers may only use first names or numbers for the students and all references to school or town are not used.  

Chapter Two “Weblogs: Pedagogy and Practice”

This chapter talks about why we have to use weblogs and it explain that writing on the web is easy and there is an audience. Weblogs differ from websites in that blogs engage readers with ideas and questions and links…they ask readers to think and to respond, they demand interaction. A good blog will be one filled with content and links.  Linking connects ideas. A weblog can be used as a class portal.  This is a place where a teacher can post class activities, assignments and even have a link to access worksheets that the students can do.   They can also be used to keep a portfolio of the student’s work.

Weblogs can allow students and teachers to collaborate with people all around the world.  Students can invite authors to interact with them on a weblog site. Also we find ideas of how can we teach using weblogs in school. Blogging like any other writing method can be used across the content areas.Teaching weblogging begins by having students going out to sites that interest them, then having the students become “experts” by creating a weblog on that subject.

BLOGS, WIKIS, PODCASTS, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom (Chapter One “The Read/Write Web”)

In this chapter we can find that the internet was intended to be a medium where people could not only read information but to share it. At first only those that could write the html code were able to make their information available for others to read.  In the last few years with wikis and blogs, anyone with an internet connection can publish on the web. Most students have grown up with this technology and are “Digital Natives” and most teachers did not grow up with this technology and are “Digital Immigrants”. Fortunately it is easy to learn to use these new tools. These tools include but are not limited to:

•  Weblogs

• Wikis

• Rich Site Summary(RSS)

• Aggregators

• Social Bookmarking

• Online Photo Galleries

• Audio/video-casting

 Also this chapter explain how to teach students what to do when they come across a site that is inappropriate.  It is also a requirement that Parental Permission is given.