Classroom
Ok, somebody pinch me…another <a href=”http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/09/Tampabay/Blogging_classroom_co.shtml”>positive newspaper article </a>about blogs in the classroom? I’d say we’re on a roll!

<blockquote>Blogs have long been popular among teenagers and young adults, who often use them at home as virtual diaries and write about their personal lives. But a growing number of teachers like Fred Roemer, Kayla’s teacher, are discovering that students are just as eager to blog about math and history.</blockquote>
And I absolutely love this:

<blockquote>On the class Web site, Schubert could see her daughter’s spelling grades half an hour after she had taken a test or monitor deadlines for assignments. But the highlight, Schubert said, was the daily classroom blog written by the fifth-graders.

She checked it at least once a day, she said.

“I liked knowing what was going on in class, seeing what they were doing, what they were learning, just knowing my daughter was in a safe place,” Schubert said.</blockquote>
Maybe we’re turning the corner here, and maybe this is a golden opportunity for those teachers using blogs successfully in the classroom to dial up their local newspapers and let them know what they’re up to. The angle is simple: Weblogs can be much more than just online journals. They can be effective learning and communication tools as well. AND, by using them in our curricula, we model appropriate use.

In fact, this has been a pretty good day, blogwise all the way around. Check out this excerpt from the <a href=”http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=27338″>Moodle blogs forum</a> from James Robertson:

<blockquote>I appreciate all the discussion about blogs vs forums — many fine points. But for me the clincher in the argument for blogs is my 18-year-old daughter who loves to blog. She is especially pleased with some of them, and reads them out loud to me. She explains why she wrote it and why she expressed herself the way she did, and what other approaches she might have taken but didn’t. She also reads blogs from her friends that she really enjoyed and talks about what makes them enjoyable.</blockquote>
We haven’t talked too much around here about the parent-child-blog relationship because there hasn’t really been that much to say. But maybe these are the seeds…

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(via Tim Wilson) I guess Yahoo News was putting them to shame on this, but whatever the reason, Google has finally stepped up to the plate and is now offering search results via RSS feeds. If you haven’t gotten the RSS bug yet, this is even more reason to. (Check out my Quick Start Guide to RSS for Educators if you haven’t already done so…I’ll be updating it soon now, too.) The news you want comes to you instead of you having to go find it. Since Google uses has over 4,500 sources in their news database, odds are you can track pretty much whatever you are interested in.

As Tim points out, however, the key to using this well is to go through the advanced search. There you can search for exact phrases, limit your search to certain publications or to a geographic area or to a certain date range and more. Just create and execute the search, then click on the RSS link on the left. (Here’s hoping Google makes the link a bit more obvious…)

You have to be prepared to tweak this as you go; see what you get for a few days and then revisit. But this is a skill that I think every teacher needs to master, and needs to teach all of her students. And from a research standpoint, it’s a great way to begin to understand the power of RSS.

Addendum: Don’t forget that if you do want to limit your search to one publication, you can find a growing list of Google News sources courtesy the Private Radio blog.
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