Bud the Teacher

    In between fiddling with podcast feeds — I think I’m getting close, but it’s time to get some RSS help — I have been scanning the educational blogs that are out there.  Man, are there plenty!
    I’ve found that Weblogg-ed News has found its way into my aggregator.  And I’m reading the archives.  And my brain is spinning by what’s to be found there.  For example, as I"m thinking about student portfolio publishing at my school, Will writes:

I’ve always thought that the most efficient model for using blogs in
schools would be the one that collects student work from all courses
and then feeds it out by categories to teacher aggregators. That way
students build an online archive and ultimately, perhaps, portfolio of
work throughout their schooling. Teachers simply subscribe to the
relevant content from each student blog and comment back as necessary.

    What an elegant solution.  And another fine reason to incorporate blogs into my classroom.  Right now, I use a discussion board for all of our online discussion.  But what if I used blogs instead?  A two-way, rather static and sometimes artificial conversation could be transformed into a very organic and interesting collection of student work — and it would be a single click to have it all delivered to me — a handy help for taking care of recording progress for the purpose of  silly ol’ grades.
    I’ve still got lots of back-reading to do to better understand the potential of this technology — but I like what I am seeing more and more.