Learning the Ropes of Blogging

[Connie Lee Awad]

If anyone is experiencing the same butterflies about blogging as I am I may have found a few sites that might be helpful. I really haven't had time to fully explore them; however, they looked intresting so I wanted to share.
Edutopia
Edutopia, sponsored by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, is the online companion to the Edutopia magazine. The site provides an “in-depth and interactive resource, with practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.” You can read articles online, or sign-up for an email newsletter.
http://www.edutopia.org/

Classroom 2.0
Classroom 2.0 is a wiki-based resource for educators interested in new Internet tools for education. The site has articles and resources for those just getting started, and a forum for communicating with other teachers.
http://www.classroom20.com/

Open Educational Resources Commons
OER Commons is a global teaching and learning network of free-to-use K-12 resources. “The mission of OER Commons is to expand educational opportunities by increasing access to high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER), and facilitating the creation, use, and re-use of OER, for instructors, students, and self-learners.” Content is searchable by key-word, subject, or grade level. Members can submit their own content and links.
http://www.oercommons.org/

EduBloggerWorld
EduBloggerWorld, is “an international network for educational bloggers and friends. A meeting place, as well as a coordinating location for live face-to-face and virtual events.” This site is dedicated to facilitate connections and community among educational bloggers from around the world.
http://edubloggerworld.ning.com/

2. Read blogs from interesting people
David Warlick
Educational consultant and author, David Warlick speaks frequently on issues surrounding 21st Century Literacy. His Landmark for Schools web site (http://landmark-project.com/) provides resources from his presentations as well as web tools such as the Citation Machine.
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Vicki Davis
Vicki Davis, also known at the Cool Cat Teacher, self-described teacher, entrepreneur, and freelance writer, is the author of the popular Cool Cat Teacher blog, covering topics from her conference presentations on innovative uses of web resources in the classroom. Vicki is also a frequent contributor to Ed Tech Talk podcasts.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

Larry Ferlazzo
Larry Ferlazzo is a high school teacher English Language Learners. His blog specializes in web resources for teaching ELL, ESL, and EFL students. Larry is best known for his collections of “Best of” resources for everything from “The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers” to “The Best Online Video Games For Learning Language & Content Knowledge” and more.
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

3. Listen to Podcasts and Watch Videos

EdTechTalk
Podcasts by educators for educators. EdTechTalk currently sponsors shows like EdTechWeekly (a weekly roundup of technology and education issues,) Teachers Teaching Teachers (hosted by teachers who mentor and teach other teachers,) and WOW2 (featuring women educators.) Episodes are broadcast live, and are also archived.
http://www.edtechtalk.com/

TeacherTube
TeacherTube is kind of like YouTube, but for teachers. Their goal “is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos.” Videos are searchable and also organized into channels like Elementary, Middle School, and High School, as well as groups like Bilingual Parenting or the 505 Youth Film Festival. If you sign up for an account, you can also add videos to a list of favorites.
http://www.teachertube.com/

TED Talks
The TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual conference bring together some of the most significant voices from divergent fields from around the world. Short video presentations are available from people like Al Gore talking about global warming, Amy Tan discussing creativity, Malcolm Gladwell exploring the nature of intelligence, or Stephen Hawking posing big questions about the nature of the universe. http://www.ted.com/

Keeping up with all these new sources of information can be a daunting task. To make this task simpler, learn to use RSS, also known as Really Simple Syndication. RSS lets you collect all of the updates from many sites in one place. Lee Lefever, on his Common Craft blog has a terrific video explaining how this is done.
http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

Those of you who are more experienced at blogging, your comments would be helpful so I can get a better idea as to what is good, great or just not worth my time.