Educational Technology

I would absolutely love to use blogs in my classroom when I become a teacher. I think blogs are a useful tool to help the entire class communicate with one an other using technology. Blogs give the students a forum to share their ideas with the teacher and each other and can help stimulate discussions online. If I were to use blogs in my teaching I would probably have students create their own blog for our class and require students to post one entry a week based on something we talked about in class, and then maybe have them post a comment to another students post to see if we can get a discussion going. I think that would be the most useful way to make use of a blog in the classroom. I want my students to view their classroom blog as a safe place where they can post their opinions, and one advantage of a blog would be if you had a student in class who is maybe afraid of speaking up in front of the class then the blog would be another place they could go to voice their opinion. There are however disadvantages of using a blog. Since blogs are online and you need access to a computer in order to have access to one, all your students will need to have access to a computer, which depending on where you teach is not always going to be possible for every student. Also, as teachers we hope that all our students can be respectful toward one and other but when it comes to things written in a blog or online, some students may write something that is offensive toward someone else or use the blog to write things not appropriate for the classroom.