Blogging can improve students' reading and writing skills while also helping educators share ideas. Blogs allow students to create original content, learn through experience, provide peer feedback, and enhance literacy. Using blogs enables students to operate as both visitors who use the web as a tool and residents with an online presence. This helps students become "transliterate" by gaining meaning from various media. Educators can assign different types of blogs for students, such as research blogs, autobiographies, reading journals, or historical timelines. Blogging addresses Common Core standards by having students integrate diverse media, publish writing online, and collaborate with others.

1. BLOGGING AND THE
READING/WRITING
CONNECTION
A brief overview
By
Miriam Climenhaga

2. WHAT IS A BLOG?
 Short for web log.
 An instructional or informative format for creating your own
content.
 Shared (usually) publicly.
 Interactive via commenting and/or with group authorship.
 Linkable!

3. A Smidge of History
Blogging has its origins in how information was shared via message boards
and forums as far back as the early 1990’s. The first blog is considered to
be a blog that was started by a man named Justin Hall who created what
for him was a diary of daily events and thoughts, plus links to information
that he thought would simply be fun to share with friends. His blog is still
in existence today and can be found at his original website called simply
enough, links.net (Thompson, 2006).

4. How does blogging connect to Education?
Educators ~ Educators can use blogs to find and share ideas for
lesson plans, professional development, and dialogue with other
educators.
Students ~ Students can use blogs to create their own
content, experiential learning, peer review and revise, and
improve reading and writing skills.

5. Transliteracy
Transliteracy is defined as “The ability to derive meaning from the
use of various media” and “emphasizes the importance of
connections between users and information tools”
(Dunaway, 2011, p.679). In the podcast “The Behavior of Finding
Information”, Lynn Connaway and Erin Hood of the Online
Computer Library, Inc. (OCLC) discuss how people engage
technology. They classify people into two groups: visitors and
residents. Visitors are those who use the web as a tool, and residents
are those who have an online presence. Any person can behave in
either of these modes depending on their use (Bayne, 2013). Using
blogs as a way to teach enables students to operate as both a
visitor, and a resident. And in this capacity they are becoming
transliterate.

6. Six Traits to Blog Writing
Emphasis
Tone
Consistency
Repetition,
Information placement
Color
(Penrod, 2007)

7. What can I have my student’s do with blogs?
Research blogs
Autobiographical blogs
Webquest blogs
Word of the Day (Bell Work)
Reading Journal
Historical Timeline blogs
Virtual Museum blogs
The list goes on and on!

8. Common Core State Standards
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7 Integrate and
evaluate content presented in diverse media and
formats, including visually and quantitatively, as
well as in words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.6 Use
technology, including the Internet, to produce and
publish writing and to interact and collaborate with
others.

9. References
Bayne, G. (Producer) (2013, December 4). The behavior of finding information.
Gerry Bayne(EDUCAUSE). [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from
http://www.educause.edu
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012). English language arts
standards. Retrieved from
http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy
Penrod, D. (2007). Using blogs to enhance literacy. Lanham: Rowman&
Littlefield Education.
Thompson, C. (2006, February 20). The early years. Retrieved from
http://nymag.com/news/media/15971/

10. Fin