eLearning4schools.net

This was taken from edublog the short article give 10 useful ways to use a blog.

Edublogs hosts hundreds of thousands of blogs for teachers, students, researchers, professors, librarians, administrators and anyone and everyone else involved in education.

Edublogs are completely free, without any advertising, and come with 100MB of free upload space

“There are many ways you can use a blog in your teaching, here are ten to get you started:

1. Post materials and resources

The web is a fantastic tool when it comes to distributing resources - all you have to do on your Edublog is upload, or copy and paste, your materials to your blog and they’ll be instantly accessible by your student from school and from home. What’s more, you can easily manage who gets to access them through password and plugin safety measures.

2. Host online discussions

If you’ve ever struggled to create an online discussion space - you’re going to love what edublogs will do for you. Students can simply respond to blog posts and discuss topics you’ve set them through comments of through our simple forum functionality - commentators can also sign up to receive emails when their comments are replied to and you can easily manage and edit all responses through your blog’s administrative panel. (more…)

Today at eLearning4schools.net we created a blog carnival. Go to BlogCarnival.com for more details. Search for the eLearning carnival.

“To understand what a blog carnival is, consider some examples. Here is the first edition of Carnival of the Vanities (one of the earliest blog carnivals). Carnivals can be very descriptive like this one, or very concise, like this one. Find the style the fits your topic and time schedule.

We think blog carnivals are a great way for bloggers to recognize each other’s efforts, organize blog posts around important topics, and improve the overall level of conversation in the blogosphere. Carnivals come in edited “editions”, just like magazines or journals. The fact that carnivals are edited (and usually annotated) collections of links lets them serve as “magazines” within the blogosphere, and carnival hosts can earn their readership by providing high quality collections.

Since blog carnivals include lots of posts on specific topics, they also serve as a place to connect with those who are expert (or at least highly opinionated!) and those who are interested in that field.

Blog Carnival simplifies carnivals for two kinds of people:

People who read and contribute to blog carnivals, and
People who organize and publish blog carnivals. ”

Blogging has great potential as a means of communication but also as a creative outlet for students as well as another avenue for reflection. 

One of the eLearning4schools.net put a great blog together a year or so ago to help teachers and students in his school to create and use blogs.  We think it is a great starting point for you to take a look at.  bloggingguide.wordpress.com