Blogs have several educational benefits for students. They are highly motivating, provide opportunities for students to read and write, and are effective forums for collaboration and discussion. Blogs can be used for classroom management by informing students of assignments, for collaboration on developing writing skills, and for discussions outside of class. Student work can also be organized and stored as digital portfolios on blogs. Popular blogging platforms that are free to use include Edublogs, Blogger, and WordPress. When implementing blogs in the classroom, teachers should choose a platform, understand how they will be used, set up student accounts, set rules and a code of ethics for students.

1. Basny Alvarez and Mary Joy Balcacer

2. A “brief , discrete hunks of
information called posts are
arrranged in reverse-chronological
order (the most recent posts come
first).”
(Doctorow et al 2002, p.1)

4. There are numerous educational
benefits of blogs. Blogs are:
• Highly motivating to students,
especially those who otherwise
might not become participants in
classrooms.
• Excellent opportunities for
students to read and write.
• Effective forums for
collaboration and discussion.

5. 1. Classroom Management: Inform
students of class requirements, post
handouts, notices, and homework
assignments, or act as a question
and answer board.
2. Collaboration: Blogs provide a
space where teachers and students
can work to further develop writing
or other skills with the advantage of
an instant audience.
3. Discussions: A class blog opens the
opportunity for students to discuss
topics outside of the classroom.
4. Student Portfolios: Blogs present,
organize, and protect student work
as digital portfolios. As older entries
are archived, developing skills and
progress may be analyzed more
conveniently.

6.  Edublogs:
Edublogs lets you easily create and
manage student and teacher blogs,
quickly customize and include
videos.
 Blogger:
This is a free weblog publishing tool
from Google, for sharing text,
photos and video. You can set up
as many blogs as you want and
right from your Google account.
 Wordpress:
very easy to use and
completely free.

7.  Choose an appropriate blogging
platform for your situation.
 Understand why and how you
will use it in your class.
 Understand the features you
and your students will need to
use.
 Set up your students accounts.
 Know what to do when students
forget their log in information
and keep that info safe.
 Make sure that all of your
students will have fair and equal
access to computers to get the
job done.
 Let parents and guardians know
what you are doing.
 Set the rules for students.
 Create a code of ethics.

9. •Provide further assignments for students to
work on.
•Have students work in small groups to write
and post summaries of content covered in
class.
•Get students to do their writing assignments
in the form of blog posts.
•Encourage students to post comments on
each others postings.
•Use blogs for peer learning. Get students to
read their colleagues writings and underline
spelling and grammatical mistakes.
•Use blogs for classroom projects where
students can include videos, clips, audio,,
text and images.
•Teachers can create a specific section just
for website links and references to other
interesting content online.
•Use activities, games, puzzles to enrich
students learning experiences.
•Challenge your students to write, record
and post tutorials about certain concepts of
things you teach them.

10. •52 Education Blogs You Should Follow.
(2017). TeachThought. Retrieved 4 March 2017, from
http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/52-education-
blogs-you-should-follow/
•Blogs for education - Learning and Teaching - The
University of Sydney. (2017). Sydney.edu.au. Retrieved 4
March 2017, from
http://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/learning_tea
ching/ict/theory/internet/blogs.shtml
•Nguyen, T., Nguyen, T., & profile, V. (2017). The use of
blogs in education. Thanhnguyen75.blogspot.com.
Retrieved 4 March 2017, from
http://thanhnguyen75.blogspot.com/2006/11/use-of-
blogs-in-education_14.html
•The Ultimate Guide to The Use of Blogs in Teaching.
(2017). Educatorstechnology.com. Retrieved 4 March 2017,
from
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/ultimate-
guide-to-use-of-blogs-in.html