LiveBinder Collection

My teaching partner, Chantelle Davies, and I have been working on a collection of resources to aid us in our lesson planning for science and social science.  Since we often end up wit a variety of resources bookmarked and saved in a variety of places, we have decided to open up a LiveBinder account together.  By having a shared account we can easily double our efforts in finding materials.  This is especially helpful when we are both teaching split grade classes.  This is just the early stages of our collections and we plan to add to it as the year goes on.  Please take a look at what we have so far and let us know if you have any great suggestions that we should add.  

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?present=true&id=1405452 

The World Is Our Audience

But We Still Need To Know Our Target Audience

Though blogs are in the public domain, blogs and bloggers write about topics to catch the interest of a target audience. As teachers, we try and reinforce this concept to students. When working on writing tasks, we teach students to think of the audience and consider how the audience will affect the style of writing; how much information should be shared; what type of vocabulary should be used with the audience; length of piece;  the purpose of the piece and the age/background of the audience.   Keeping this in mind, it is easy to see why it is important to have a separate class blog and a professional blog.  Each one of these blogs targets a very different audience and the purpose of each is also different.  

A professional blog for teachers is about pedagogy, practice and reflections.  The blog looks at what is being done in the classroom and comments on experiences.  It is open for others in similar situations to share their learning or practice.  It is a place for teachers to connect and collaborate.  Through the professional blog, as new ideas and thoughts are added the teacher of the professional blog gains new insight to ideas which allows for personal growth. 

The classroom blog is for students to grow.  It is a place for them to share their learning with peers.  It allows peers to comment and add ideas to what is being discussed.  In this case, the purpose of the teacher is to coach students through blogging.  To model and guide students so that they can grow as the year progresses.  If the student's and professional blogs were to be mixed it may become intimidating for some students to know that their work is being viewed by many teachers.  

FiberOne

Trix

When considering how the formatting would change on each reminded me of the lesson about cereal boxes and targeted audiences.  How we set up the format really depends on our audience.  If we want the targeted audience, students or professionals, to have interactions with either group the blog needs to offer topics that are of interest to that group, and it needs to appeal to visually to the target group.  It is important to keep student blogs and professional blogs separate because as they say, "Trix are for kids!"  

Battle of the Blog

Click for source.

I have to admit that before I began my course, blogging was a something I was interested in learning more about so that I could use it in my class.  When I would explore other blogs I became intimidated by the look of the blog and all the work that seemed to go into creating one.  My teaching partner, Chantelle Davies, used blogs this past year and ensured me that it was not that difficult to create but I still wasn't convinced but promised to try.  After only a few weeks using a blog I find it fairly simple to use and feel confident that I can follow through on one of Chantelle and mine goals:  create a class blog.

Website vs. Blog

The question before us is why a class blog and not a website?   Though both seem to do similar things, I find them quite different.  Both a blog and websites offer information on various topics.  In a website, the information remains static.  It is placed on the site and rarely updated.  This is fine if a teacher plans to create a website for a unit where students can gather information about a topic.  If the teacher's need of the tool is to only share and distribute content then the website is a good tool.  However, if the teacher would like a collaborative and interactive site then a blog the best tool for this application.  The blog allows the teacher to post update and current content and allows others to interact with that content.  It is a way of sharing and building upon content.  So the answer to the question: blog or website really depends on how the tool will be used in the classroom.  

Websites and Blogs both have a use in the class.  Just to create the tool serves no purpose unless children are explicitly taught what each tool is for and explained how to use each as a learning tool.  However, when I think of a website I think of big name sites(PBS Kids, National Geographic Kids, etc.).  I was wondering if anyone has created a class website and share it as an example.