Originally published July 26 2005
Blogs serve as teachers' venting outlet, educational tool
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, teachers in the Tallahassee area and all over the country are embracing blogs (short for Weblogs) as a means to express the joy and frustration of their day, but also as a way to engaging their students by publishing pupils' views and musings.
An intrepid group of educators in Florida and nationwide is starting to use it to kvetch about their day or as a teaching tool.
Boynton Beach High science teacher Jamey Young uses his blog for the former, alternately enthusing online about good days and grumbling about bureaucracy or FCAT requirements on others.
Self-reflection is a hallmark of many teachers' blogs, according to the creator of weblogg-ed.com - the first stop for most teachers who want to try blogging.
But thinking of them only as online journals shortchanges the medium, said Will Richardson, the nationally known lecturer on the topic who runs the site.
The conference is a necessary stop on many technophile teachers' summer itineraries, and this year an estimated 12,500 of them attended.
For the first time, there were at least 15 different sessions devoted to or directly referencing blogging in the classroom.
Chris Burnett, a self-described technophobic language arts teacher in Macomb County, used a blog for the first time this past year to engage her students.
Rather than hang their writing around the room, she's publishing the musings of one of her eighth-grade classes on her blog.
"The kids got feedback from England, from the United States, from Bermuda," Burnett said.
Fear of the outside world having a window into students' lives is nagging at the Palm Beach County school district, according to technology programs specialist Kim Cavanaugh.
"We're certainly not encouraging it, and we're certainly not discouraging it," Cavanaugh said of students using teachers' blogs, crystallizing the quandary that many observers of the blogging trend said educators now find themselves in.
He was one of the teachers making the pilgrimage to Philadelphia, where other school districts' representatives were sharing the same concerns.
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