There are five things in the St. Petersburg Times article, Tampabay: Blogging classroom connects to parents, that I believe to be noteworthy:
- Teachers are recognizing that blogs are not exclusively the domain of teenage diaries/journals and that there are genuine benefits to personal web publishing for younger students
- Security concerns/issues surrounding blogs for pre-teens can be addressed
- Blog and discussion board technology is not something that a teacher or parent or student should fear
- "teacher-run blogs can also be instructive about the use of technology"...meaning that constructive and well moderated direction can make a difference in how a child views technology (I would add that teacher run blogs can have an entrepreneurial effect on generations who have been slow to embrace it...IMHO)
- Will Richardson is appropriately identified as an expert in educational blogging. Someone may have added that to his credentials previously, but this is the first affirmation that I have seen in print...and I agree completely
You can get a peek at what is going on in the Polar Bear blog from Mr. Roemer's 5th grade class..but you will note that only members are allowed beyond the surface. Interesting enough, the web site with the blog also includes a discussion board, a class calendar (assignment dates included and accessible to parents), a practice test area, and a news and information home page. The code supporting this venture is vBulletin and is PHP based using MySQL...'interesting package!