Welcome to the tangled web! For two years I have served as gatekeeper of a blog that my department uses to record the goings on of our professional learning communities (PLCs). One blog was through moodle (I think!) and the second version of it was through Blackboard, but both times I didn't set up the blog and knew very little about what went into that. This lesson has been very enlightening for me and I am pleased that I have done the behind the scenes work on this one!
Though I love having the PLC blog at school (so great for recording what's going on, attaching common formative assessments, sharing ideas), I continue to wonder about my effective use of blogs with my students. I looked at a blog that a math department used. They post interesting problems for students to solve and comment on. I thought that would be an interesting use of a blog in chemistry. If I posed problems for students to solve, I would be meeting NETS-S standard 4, in which students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Students could plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project and also use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions. It would be beneficial to students to look at their peers' solutions and comment on them.
Also, I tend to provide a lot of commentary on assignments when I pass them back (common mistakes, different ways to prepare) and I am considering including that in a blog so that students could reflect on those thoughts outside of the minute in which they receive a grade and so that parents could read about what is happening in class.
One of my greatest challenges to having a blog would be investing the time to keep it current. I hate it when I go to a website and the links don't work or the content is from 5 years ago. If a blog is about what's happening now, I wouldn't want to attempt it without keeping it up-to-date.
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