Please excuse my reference to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I just watched the movie last night :)
While I have had a blog for a while, I have not really used it. Having an assignment that actually makes us explore what gadgets that blogs have to offer really opened my eyes to how useful they can be. Even thought I just posted links to other blogs I follow, this would be an excellent resource for students. Posting links to educational blogs as well as resources that will be useful for assignments. The email notification when there is a new post would also be very beneficial for students and parents so they can keep updated about what is going on in the classroom.
As I searched through the gadgets I did notice a lot of not very useful ones like, "A puppy a day" which shows a different picture of a cute puppy everyday. If I had a blog just for fun, I think that I would definitely use that one.
I also like the idea of email notification for parents and students to keep updated on classroom happenings.
ReplyDeleteI would strongly support the use of email notification and RSS which manifests itself on the bottom of most our our blog pages something like "Subscribe to: Post (Atom)".
ReplyDeleteAnd yes there are the "not as useful or necessary" gadgets as well and as big boys and girls we need to decide which ones we want to play with.
I have used "A puppy a day" before on a personal blog and people told me they checked it just to see the puppy. I follow a great blog www.dooce.com (mommy blogger) and she has a similar idea where she posts pics of her dog balancing random objects on it's head. Seem simple, yet totally hooks me in to know what the next Chuck picture will be. I think this is one way to market your blog. Find some gadgets or create your own that hooks readers into your world and maybe they will read what you wrote as well!
ReplyDeleteI never thought of it as a way to market my blog but that is an excellent idea. Hooks are something that we pretty much preach about in language arts when students are writing "you need to hook the reader in!" we tell them, but it applies to so many other aspects of media--like blogging.
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