Presented during The Three Days Professional Development Course for Teachers at ZIET Mysore organised by KVS and Oracle Academy. The presentation explore the use of blogs in our class rooms. Blogs can be effectively used for collaborative online projects providing a platform for the students to express their ideas, concepts and skills.

2. Let’s Begin…
How many of you…
…have heard of blog/blogging before?
…regularly read a blog?
…contribute to a blog?
…use it in your classroom?
…make use of RSS?

3. Blog?
• Web Logs
• A form of micro-publishing or documenting
your thoughts about any topic on the Web
• a personal, chronologically ordered set of
entries, each having a title, description and
unique URL, in a web-based ‘log’ or journal

4. Terminology
• Blogging: The act of contributing to blogs
• Blogosphere: All blogs, or the blogging community
• Blogroll: A list of other blogs
• Permalink: The unique URL of a single post
• Post: An entry written and published to a blog

5. Terminology
• RSS: URL that can be used to subscribe to your
blog and get automatic notifications of new posts
• TrackBack: automated means for notifying another
blog when you have referenced them
• Pingback: The alert in the TrackBack system

6. Reading/Listening
Sharing Reflecting
Writing /Recording

7. Characteristics
• Posts are in reverse chronological order…most
recent first
• Searchable archives
• Updated on a regular basis, sometimes daily
• Most Web logs are written in an informal, first person
style

8. Characteristics
• Hyperlink to or reference news and information from
other sites
• Set of tools supporting simple creation of XML-
based content
• Primarily text, but Web logs can include all sorts of
multimedia files
• Rely on RSS technology – Really Simple Syndication
or Rich Site Summary

9. Types of Blogs
Personal
• Daily dairy/Journal
• Experiences, refelctions
• Photo Album
Professional
• Family/friends
• Educational/Corporate Public
…
• Skill development
• Public Issues
• Knowledge Repository
… • Marketing
• Awareness
….

10. The Advantages
 Free or low-cost  Chronological, categorised
 Easy to create, use & content
maintain  Encourages personal
 Access anywhere reflections
 Interactive  original ideas and stimulate
 Wide audience discussions
 Many Blog services  Knowledge management and
archiving

11. The Disadvantages
• Large number of blog services
• Template and layout editing
• Integration of multimedia
• Authenticity
• No censorship
• Needs regular updating

13. TEACHERS
• As Writer/Contributor
 Collaborate and share ideas and resources world-wide
 Maintain a personal journal
 Knowledge management tool
 Post class room announcements, project, assignment,
reading lists, Instructions, tips and tutorials
 Create selected web resources for students
 Communication to parents
 Collaborative blog with students

14. TEACHERS
• As Reader
 Discipline specific blogs to keep up-to-date
 Access to teaching resources/lesson plans
 Assess student’s projects/assignments
 Professional growth
 Peer interaction

15. STUDENTS
 Document their class works online
 Reflections on their learning
 Informal medium for submission of projects/assignments
 Outside classroom interaction with peers and experts
 May motivate those who might not participate in class room
discussions
 Self learning – access to wide variety of study tips/materials
 Stay in touch with teachers and other students during
vacations

16. Benefits
• Motivating to students
• Encourage learners engagement and participation
• Provide individual environment for them to study
• Provides a platform for showcasing creativity and skills
• Effective interaction
• Multidisciplinary and multidirectional learning
• Reaching out masses

17. Skill Development
• Reading and Comprehension
• Sharing — thoughts, concepts, experiences, knowledge
• Analyzing
• Reflecting — Critiquing, Writing, Questioning, Reacting
• Communicating
• Collaboration – with peers, experts, public
• Record Keeping – thoughts, experiences, concepts, ideas

18. Issues
Acceptable content
Netiquette
Plagiarism/Copyright
Online safety
Responsible behaviour Teachers as
 Offtrack discussions Moderators
 Inappropriate language or tone

20. The Options
• Free Blogs on the Net
• Sofwares for Intranet/Internet (Free and paid)
• Paid Blogs

21. Considerations
Selecting the platform
Intended Use Free/Low Cost
Ease of Use Intranet/Internet
Easy Access Technical Knowledge
Collaboration
Content
Privacy

22. RSS/Atom Feeds
• Better alternative to bookmarking
• RSS originally RDF Site Summary commonly called
Really Simple Syndication
• Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated
works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and
video—in a standardized format
• Need an Feed Reader like Google Reader or Bloglines

23. Wiki
• An extremely flexible kind of blog
• supports collaborative web-editing
• A wiki is a piece of server software that
allows users to freely create and edit Web
page content using any Web browser (from
wiki.org)
• A wiki can also be used as a discussion
medium, a repository, a mail system, and a
chat room

24. • Hosted by Google
• Subdomain blogspot.com; blogspot.in
• Simple to use interface
• All basic facilities offered
• Group/Team Blogging
• Mail to blog
• and many more …