Blogs vs. Edmodo

In my last post I mentioned that blogger.com is a blocked website in my county.  I began thinking about other websites similar to blogs that I could use with my students for the upcoming school year.  While I know it is not the same as blogging, I thought I could use Edmodo to give my students access to responding via typing.  After completing this week's conference I learned about Edmodo and tried signing up for anaccount to explore it more.  Edmodo is a social media website for students.  Students can still respond to posts created by the students and by the teacher, it just has a different set up.

Elizabeth wrote on her blog about using blogger.com in her second grade classroom very minimally.  Students could respond to a question in one or two sentences.  This seems small, but for a second grader, this could be a large task.  Students would also need to learn how to navigate between different blogs to create comments.  If I used Edmodo with my classroom, I could easily be an administrator and I could create discussions where students could respond to my question and one another's responses.  I know that Edmodo is not the same exact thing as a blog, but I feel that it is a similar concept.  This is one way I thought of that I could get around blogger.com being blocked in my county!

Using Blogs in My Classroom?

A lot of times we try to figure out ways to incorporate technology into classroom and sometimes we come across a problem with the technology.  I recently had my last few days of school with my students.  The last four days we had two hour early dismissal day for teachers to work.  I spent a lot of time packing up my classroom since I will be moving schools and putting finishing touches on report cards.  I had a little leftover time and thought I would log on to WebTycho to work on the blogging assignment.  I knew that blogs that I had visited have been blocked in the past, but was shocked when I could not get on to blogger.com to update or comment on any posts.  I wondered to myself, how could I ever incorporate a blog into my teaching, if the county won't even let us access the websites.  In my county, I don't even have an override option for blocked webpages!

As a teacher who is in constant communication with families and parents, I would love to be able to incorporate a blog as a type of classroom communication.  I could easily post picture from activities and events happening in the classroom to have a home school connection with the followers.  Unfortunately, I am unable to access the website from my work computer.  I feel that I do enough work at home as it is, that another task (updating a blog) would be even more time consuming!  Does anyone else have webpages that are blocked at their school that would be helpful to access if you had the opportunity?  Blogger.com is just one example and I am sure there are SO many more!

-Danielle

First Post!

Welcome to my blog!  I am very excited to have my own blog and to use it throughout the course of the semester.  I was very shocked with how easy it was to set up the blog.  I already had a Gmail account, and was able to quickly use my log in and password for that and set up a blog through blogger.com.  I also did not realize that blogger.com was linked with Google.

As a person that frequently follows different blogs, I am excited to see how much I can learn about blogging.  I find that blogging is a great way for people to share ideas,especially educators.  I am currently a second grade teacher that will be switching grade levels and schools for the upcoming school year.  In my new placement, I will be teaching first grade and plan to browse many different blogs throughout the summer for some new and exciting ideas to put in place in my classroom.  I hope that I can use the blog as a way to share information with others as well!

Danielle