United States School Blogs

When I did my search to find other schools using blogs as a part of their work, I honestly never expected to find ELEMENTARY schools doing the same thing I am JUST learning how to do in college. When I was in school, if we had an assignment due or if our parents wanted to check in on exactly what we were doing as a class, they had to ask the teacher when they dropped us off for school in the morning. This is apparently no longer the case. In my search, I found Mrs.Perry's blog. (Mrs. Perry is a 4th grade teacher at St. Leonard Elementary School in Calvert County.) It is completely set up to tie the teachers and parents together. She even has links posted to take the kids to sites for educational games. She also uses it to "brag" on her students. There are all sorts of pictures posted showing how the kids were suppose to create an animal which was fictional and a combination of the characteristics of several of their favorite animals put together. Upon completing the assignment, she posted some of their great art work so that everyone could see what they did! What an awesome way to encourage the kids to do their absolute best!

Mrs. Perry has also has a link to showcase the the work done by her students. You can also see, as Mrs. Perry says, "how her students are using technology." This is a wonderful way to again, connect parents and teachers, but to also really let the parents see how their children are spending their time at school. As we learned from our technology video from our last blog, technology is an unavoidable part of our future. If my child were in Mrs. Perry's class, I would feel very encouraged that my child was being properly prepared.

My second school that I found was in Central New Jersey @ AAHS. The teacher, Mr. Brian McLaughlin has done an awesome job with this blog'. His students are using this site to post comments on pretty much anything. They are allowed to just make post about whatever, and they also use the tools on his site to post about educational things as well.

Mr. McLaughlin has opened up this site for discussions to take place between his students. This is allowing them, even when they aren' t talking about school work, to communicate with each other.

Mr. McLaughlin is using his blog to, along with many other teachers, reinforce assignments, etc. He also has a map project going to let students mark where they have been in the world and is keeping track. I think this is neat because you can see exactly how many places we have all been.