The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Presented by: Brian Bridges

Preview: Discover a variety of online, collaborative writing tools, and see how teachers are using them to engage their students, participate in online writing projects, and publish to an authentic audience. We’ll review and demonstrate a variety of free resources including Edublogger, pbwiki, and Google Docs. Handouts include content standard connections, 100 ways to wiki and blog in the curriculum, and tutorials. Come early for a BONUS presentation.

The bonus presentation talked about: Jamendo.com cc licensed music, Piclens for viewing images (browser add-on).

Brian works for CLRN (California Learning Resources Network) (http://brianbridges.pbwiki.com)

Why blog? Easy, collaborative, give audience, and archive/realia of learning, and many FREE resources. They are also great for professional development. You can use it for your school/class website.

Have a kid assigned to take notes for class, and post it on blog. IT GIVES STUDENTS AUTHENTICITY. In subject matter, in assignment.

Moodle vs. Blog? Moodle is for class, blog is for outside consumption.

Translation of blogs (you can read blogs in other languages that way).

Wikis: for collaborative documents. Google Docs is nice, but is not great for multipage document since it’s all one page. You can break down a doc in wiki into pages, and link them in hierarchy.

Make the kids do the writing, and teach each other and teach the standards

This session covered a lot of territory I was already familiar with, but it was a well done overview, and the presenter was energetic, and enthusiastic. I would recommend his presentation for people who are at a complete newbie, or mid-range of knowledge.

Brian Bridges wiki

• Background materials for presentation
  

Blogs and Wikis: Writing Across the Curriculum (Bridges, Brian) - The CUE Community

• CUE Community page for presentation