Blogs are all around us these days on the internet. So, why not bring them into the classroom. In my classroom, I believe that blog post will very useful for both myself and my students. In terms of any historical documents that we read, my students can use blog posts to respond to discussion questions or give their overall reaction of the material. I also think it will be helpful to use the posts to get feedback from students and cut down on the amount of paper distributed in class. In high school, I know many teachers like to submit pre-surveys to both learn about the students and post surveys to see what the students though of class. I think it would be fun for the students to be able to look at their responses throughout the semester and see what they like or do not like about class. Additionally, it would give me the opportunity as the teacher to make sure my students are enjoying themselves.
The advantages to using blogs in the classroom are that a teacher has the opportunity to periodically check on student's work that is posted on the blog and can also have a forum to post questions up there. Some disadvantages to using blogs in the classroom are they hard to control what students actually post and maybe the students will use the technology incorrectly and not ask for help. Like any other technology, blogs need to be regulated and the teacher has to carefully select how he/she wants to utilize them.
Google Apps are great in my opinion. The fact that you can share a document, spreadsheet or powerpoint presentation with anyone else and also see the changes that a person makes is great. The functionality and level of innovation is not as great as the traditional apps but they are pretty cool and helpful. They make it even easier for a teacher to check students work and provide comments and a gmail account is very easy to set up. Here's some advantages and disadvantages to using them over traditional apps.
Advantages:
1. no downloads, just open a file
2. the file can be saved as anything and downloaded to Word, Powerpoint or Excel
3. sharing between pupil and teacher to get feedback right now
4. convenient, all you need is a google account
5. great option for group projects
Disadvantages
1. not as much functionality
2. features are limited
3. can be confusing sometimes
4. not everyone has a google account
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