How and Why to Blog at GPPS

I am going to be embarking on a crazy journey this school year as I connect my classes to high schools around the world through class blogs and other collaborative web tools. I've been able to enlist a few other teachers to give it a try, but I realized that some people might not know how to create and run a blog on the Schoolwires website. Some of you might be wondering why you should start a blog and what would you do with it. Below is a Wallwisher (Wonderful tool I've used in class!) where teachers from all over have given reasons to blog in the classroom. Take a look.



Blogging has been a great way for me to flesh out ideas for classes and find the best tool to present lessons. I have met many amazing people that are willing to help at the drop off that hat no matter where they are in the world. From a student standpoint, blogging is a great way to increase the overall literacy of our students. Literacy is no longer defined as reading and writing. Computer skills need to be added to the mix if students are going to become functioning adults. Blogs and other Web tools allow students to work on these skills. Having students read and respond to a teacher's post helps with literacy. As we strive to bring the literacy level up, blogs are a great tool to help achieve this goal. Whether you are a Math, Science, Art, Music or Foreign Language teacher, blogging can help you and your students grow. Consider this when you think about adding blogs to your class. Here is a blog post about the positive impact blogging has had on a High School Administrator.

Below you will find a video on how to set up and moderate your class blog. I will be creating a series of these screencasts to share with you in the hopes it will spur you on to creating your own blog. I hope to create a great network of teacher run blogs at South and connect them to schools around the globe. It will take some time, by I'm confident that the best teacher in the world can handle this without a problem.

I hope this video tutorial will help you as you try to set up a blog. I will have other screen casts in the future showing you how embed YouTube videos and other helpful tips. If yo have any questions, please post them in the comments section of the blog. That way I can help everyone in a timely manner. Thanks!

- Give it a try!