Free Micro-Blogging Site For Teachers and Students

New age requires us to adopt the learning procedure in tech ways, like use of blogging or micro-blogging to make teaching and learning easier. Young generation is now addicted to computers and internet, and if teachers or parents are successful in proper use of these mediums, they would be able to divert the attention of our children towards learning.

Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students. It’s not only a great way to introduce microblogging to students in a safe environment, but it’s also a great communication tool. At this platform teachers and students can use itto send notes, links, files, alerts, assignments, and events to each other.

Let's learn first what is 'micro-blogging'?

According to Wikipedia: Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually up to 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by everyone or if chosen by the user, a select group. the ease of use that microblogging platforms provide makes it a better way to communicate with students than the tradition blogging platform. Traditional blogging platforms are designed to communicate long posts to a large group of people.

Microblogging platforms are really designed for interaction and communication in short posts and we feel that is an advantage to a teacher in getting their students to interact in classroom activities.

Use of Edmodo in the classroom

Teachers can use it to post daily assignments, and students can use it to answer questions regarding the assignments.
A lot of teachers have students find articles to bring to class. Now a teacher could have the student submit a link to the articles in Edmodo instead of printing them out.
Teachers can plan on using it to have students submit their assignments through Edmodo.
It can used as a tool for managing communication with other committee members or other school teachers.

You are able to attach files, embed links, or even turn a basic post into an assignment or event complete with date metadata. Very easy to send out an assignment along with attachment out to a specific class of your students.

you could send your contact information and office hours to ALL of your classes. Or send a video to your after school club for them to enjoy. You get the idea. Lots of control here.
Students can save specific messages in their ‘locker’ to refer back to later. Assignments and events hang around and will appear conveniently in the sidebar when their associated dates are coming up.

How does it work?
Teachers sign up for accounts, and then create groups. Each group has a unique code which is distributed by the teacher to the class. Students then sign up (no email address required) and join the group using the code.

More at: faq

Related posts:

* Links for teachers to start educational blogs

* Effective use of Blogging in education

* Practice Of Blogging In Classroom

Practice Of Blogging In Classroom

Many educational institutions or teachers are aware of the power and affects of "Blogging" for educational purposes but they don't know where to start. I hope that this article would help the students or teachers interested for use of blogging in classroom.

Blogs for Learning, is an online resource about instructional blogging. The site provides students and instructors with information and resources about the technical and pedagogical aspects of blogging in the classroom.

Blogs for Learning was originally conceived by Dr. Ethan Watrall and Dr. Nicole Ellison as a robust online resource designed for students and instructors who are interested in the theory and practice of blogging within an educational setting.

The goal of Blogs for Learning is to provide information and resources as to the technical, legal, and pedagogical aspects of blogging in the classroom. The design of the Blogs for Learning site was carefully conceived to be elegant, highly standards compliant and very forward thinking.

Blogs for Learning was created with the generous support from the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and the Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University.

Articles section contains very useful articles which can be downloaded easily either for reading or printing.

Few titles are:

- Student Blogging - What You Should Know

- Blogging for Large Classes

- Using Blogs in a College Classroom: What's Authenticity Got To Do With It?

* There are many tutorials which are in a flash presentation format, so you just have to sit, relax, watch the videos and learn about "Blogging". (Section is not working for the time being, but hope that it would be updated soon)

Read their "blog" for useful and latest articles.

Related links and posts:

- Use second generation web technologies so you can be at the forefront of transforming learning in your school at The Why 2 of Web 2.0

- Benefits of classroom Blogging?

- Classroom Blogging: More than Just Tech Ed

- A blog about career development, technology and learning strategies: The Bamboo Project

- A blog about Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century.
'Learning Blog'

- Links for teachers to start educational blogs

- Effective use of Blogging in education

Effective use of Blogging in education

There is a wide usage of blogging in learning sector. I was really surprise to know that "blogging" is very effectively been used in education sector. Here are some links for teachers to create blogs for them or for their students. There are some article links which can guide you if you are in doubt to use "blogging" for educational purposes.

Education blogs are becoming a means for educators, students, and education administrators to interact more effectively than ever before. Technorati currently tracks 63.1 million blogs. Over 5,000 of them are about education.
There are over 30,000 blogs hosted at edublogs.org alone.
Link with 100 educational blogs list:
Top 100 Education Blogs

*** The largest education community on the internet, Edublogs was started on the 31st of July 2005 in Melbourne, Australia.. Now hosting over 100,000 blogs.
Edublogs.org

How?

* Sign up for a free education blog in seconds
* Use it to transform your teaching or talk to other teachers
* Powered by WordPress, the best blogging tool on the web
* Safe, secure, supported and free of any advertising
* Providing entirely free tools with no advertising, no fees and no limits on elements like bandwidth.They can even give you 100MB of upload space, completely free of charge.

* "Blogs in Education" is a page to provide you some resources if you want to start using blogs for yourself or your students. Options for instructors using blogs are:
- Content-related blog as professional practice
- Networking and personal knowledge sharing
- Instructional tips for students
- Course announcements and readings
- Annotated links
- Knowledge management
Stedents can use blogs in:
- Reflective or writing journals
- Knowledge management
- Assignment submission and review
- Dialogue for groupwork
- E-portfolios
- Share course-related resources
For resources and more details: Blogs in Education

*** Educational blogger network(eBN) is a community of teachers and education professionals and supporters who use weblogs for teaching and learning. The network assists members to advance weblog integration in education.
Mission:

"eBN is a collaborative of teachers and organizations using weblogs in education. Its purpose is to help its members, kindergarten through university, to access and use weblog technology for the teaching of writing and reading across the disciplines. The network provides a forum for educational professionals who use weblogs, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth, and a framework for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the integration of weblog and other digital technologies into teaching and learning."

*** epals.com's motto is "Where Learner's Connect"
"ePals" is making SchoolBlog available at no cost to schools, districts, and learners globally.

What they say about themselves: "Our Global Community™ is the largest online community of K-12 learners, enabling more than 325,000 educators and 126,000 classrooms in over 200 countries and territories to safely connect, exchange ideas, and learn together. Our award winning SchoolBlog™ and SchoolMail™ products are widely used and trusted by schools around the world."

*** This is a pdf report which you can download by clicking right mouse button and then choosing "save as" for your hard disk drive: Blogging to learn

Read same report in html version: HTML version

*** E school News
A report published at "E school news:
Blogs are changing education (Winners of the first-ever 'Best of the Education Blog' Awards discuss blogging's impact on teaching and learning )

What is "eSchool News"?
"eSchool News" is a monthly print newspaper providing the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and the internet to transform North America's schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
The print newspaper is read by more than 300,000 school leaders, and a companion web site—eSchool News Online (http://www.eschoolnews.com ) is visited by more than 300,000 unique visitors each month, including 135,000 registered members.

Mission:
eSchool News — helping educators succeed by;

- Providing the latest news, resources and reports on the applications of technology to improve learning
- Providing resources and tools to evaluate the funding, purchasing and the evaluation of technology in the education systems.
- Assisting educators in forming collaborative alliances and providing a valuable resource bank for the exchange of information, ideas and best practices.

Few education blogs and articles:

* Brian's Education blog

* Dave's Educational Blog
About David: Dave is a Tech Coordinator at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is also the Education coordinator for the Worldbridges family of websites and cohost of edtechtalk.

* Adventure in educational blogging Susan Sedro is Technology Coordinator in Woodlands,Singapore.

*** Support Blogging has been set up to provide an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging.
Explanation of Educational Blogging at "Support Blogging"

Link to the site:
Support Blogging

* An article about usage of internet blogs to enhance classroom communication and collaboration: Classroom blogs and Wikis

* "EDUCAUSE Review" is the association's award-winning magazine for the higher education IT community. Published bimonthly in print (21,000 distributed copies) and online, the magazine takes a broad look at current developments and trends in information technology, how they may affect the college/university as an institution, and what these mean for higher education and society. An article from "EDUCAUSE Review": Educational Blogging

* An article from the "emints": "The eMINTS" National Center is an independent business unit of the University of Missouri. eMINTS offers professional development programs created by educators for educators.
Teaching Tips: Using Online Journals and Blogs

* Edu Blog Insights is an educational blog from Anne Davis who works at Georgia State University in the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education as an Information Systems Training Specialist.
He is an educator with over 20 years experience as an elementary classroom teacher, an instructional lead teacher, a reading specialist, and an instructional technology specialist.

His EduBlog is a place to reflect, discuss, and explore possibilities for the use of weblogs in education.
His article:
Rationale for educational blogging

* Another useful article from :Lorelle at Word press

* Cool tools for cool teaching-blogging

* Blogging Basics: Creating Student Journals on the Web

Links for teachers to start educational blogs

Today there is lot of scope for teachers to have their own blogs, and thus make better use of blogging platform. Teachers can stay connected to their students, their parents.

What you can do more with blogs, is explained byBlogger:

"With Blogs you can update parents about their children's progress and keep them posted on upcoming events; publish a class or school newsletter; share photos and student work; post course documents, projects and results; and easily assign collaborative group projects online with an easy way to track students’ progress.

Students can use Blogs to communicate ideas, photos and class notes, improve their writing skills, and even jump right into web publishing without having to learn HTML. Free blogs, accessible from any computer that’s connected to the Internet, can help students easily create hubs for collecting information for both long and short-term projects; store information as unpublished drafts; collect feedback on their work from classmates, teachers and parents; and take on collaborative projects where multiple students can work and comment.

Even school sports teams, dance clubs and other extracurricular school groups can use Blogger to communicate with parents about upcoming events; share group calendars; and offer event highlights and pictures. Blogs give students the opportunity to reflect, to vent and most of all to share their experiences."

1- My ecoach discusses about "Class room Blog and Wikis- How can classroom communication and collaboration be enhanced with the usage of internet blogs?"

Page link

Create a free Islamic blog!

I have been blogging from few years, but could not get in touch with good Islamic blogs. But as blogs are getting popularity I could see many quality blogs which are created within year or so. And I like browsing blogs, due to a personal touch, but web sites providing same information don't attract my attention. The main reason of blog popularity is the freshness of content, recent news and thoughts, relevant to today's modern life.

I was really impressed to see My Minaret, which is a blogging network, providing free WordPress blog. If you have a little knowledge of WordPress or blogging, you can start blogging now at: My Minaret

Some features:

* There are 32 exciting Islamic themes, and you are free to choose any one for your blog.
* You can post content, images, video and audio links that can be played inside the blog.
* You can use this blog for Dawah purposes.





Manage content at your site: Guide to manage content

*** My blog at MyMinaret