A blog is a website, that you can create for free. It is a place to write down your thoughts, opinions, good news, current events, education items, and share your findings with other people. It is a place to write. It is a place to be free to express yourself. What makes your writing become a blog, is the linking ability you use. A great blog will link to other sites. The sites are then more resources and may contain video, pictures, a log of information or more writing. At the end of every blog you will also "tag" words that will help to define what is contained in that blog. "Tag" is a key word or term associated with the blog you are posting.

Commoncraft (video may not work well, site seems to be down on this one) explains it the best, so please click on their name and watch the short video! These are my favorite videos!!

Why blog?

That is a good question. Until recently, I wasn't sure why either, but I found that it keeps my thoughts all in one neat place. I can go back and read what I wrote, and sometimes.. I even say to myself, did "I" write that? Wow!

For schools, blogging has been shown to increase writing. Many articles have been published lately stating how blogging is helping to increase students literacy rate and writing skills. It is also a place to receive feeback and collaborate with others. Also, much of the information written about in the article was obtained from the PEW Internet Research Report done on the topic.

Analysis of above Article:

An analysis of the eSchool News article mentioned above is written by Ryan Bretag on the TechLearning Blog. What Ryan is saying, is that there is some misleading information being passed along through the article. Here is what Ryan mentions in his post:

"Here is the problem. There is nothing in the survey that identifies blogging as the reason for the increase in writing or the increase value in writing. Many of these students could have appreciated writing before blogging and because of this value, found blogging to be a natural extension of such passion. Many of these bloggers could have been writing prolifically before become bloggers but found blogging as another outlet. It very well could be that “blogging helps encourage teen writing”, but none of this was made clear in the research even though some want to grab onto anything to prove just how valuable web 2.0 is in education. Instead of making assumptions, let’s ask these questions and perform the research that is needed to justify these statements."

The study did show some promising items, said Bretag is...

Teens and Writing Instruction Best Practices
While the study had many interesting points, an area that really stood out to me was what teens felt motivated them to write and how they believed schools could improve writing instruction. The survey showed that many students saw the following as important in these areas: - Choice
- Opportunity for Creativity
- High Expectations/Challenge from Adults
- Audience
- Interesting Curricula
- In-class time
- Computer-based writing tools
- Feedback Rather intriguing is how well these ideas align with research on best practices in writing instruction: a supportive environment of peers and adults, regular in-class time including workshops, choice and ownership, authentic writing opportunities, modeling, and frequent, constructive feedback to name a few.