Our new book “Making Connections With Blogging” is out.
Actually the book has been out for more than a month. The “Making Connections” part of the title is really what is stressed. From the ISTE web site:
“Some students find writing to be a chore. Others write to get an assignment done but don’t put in any extra effort. There’s nothing like blogging to change those attitudes! Students will experience a whole new level of engagement when they are writing for an audience, writing about topics they are interested in, and responding to their classmates’ posts. Bring blogging into your classroom, and your students will not only be excited about their work, they will also develop their writing, reading comprehension, critical thinking, digital citizenship, and communication skills.
Parisi and Crosby show you how you can use blogging with any student as a part of any curriculum— not as an add-on, but as an integrated part of your lessons. Learn step by step how to blog, get ideas for your curriculum area, and understand how to manage blogging in the classroom. Get your students blogging, and change how learning happens.”
“Making Connections with Blogging” is also available for the Kindle. Would love to hear any feedback from readers.
Learning is messy!
Thank you for sharing this book title and some of it’s highlights. I am new to blogging (in fact, please don’t click on my blog) so this is all new. I look forward to learning more!
Brian,
Thanks for posting highlights from your book. I look forward to reading and getting ideas from it.
I have recently learned about the benefits of blogging in the classroom and cannot wait to introduce my students to this aspect of technology within my classroom as well as to educate my fellow coworkers to the benefits so that they too can implement blogs in their lessons.
Hi Mr. Crosby,
I am a student at the University of South Alabama taking EDM 310 from Dr. John Strange. I would like to begin by telling you that as a 40 year old stay-at-home-mom, school volunteer, PTA Board Member, and Substitute Teacher, I thought I had my entire plan for teaching in my own room. I just needed that piece of paper from the University and I was good. HOWEVER, Dr. John Strange has changed every approach I ever considered toward teaching. I am now in love with the idea of student and teacher blogging, wiki, podcasts, Flippling the Classroom, video I Books, and more!
The only thing our class did not have the time to address and left me feeling like I had a void was the concept of “Now that I have all of these ideas, how do I fit them into an already busy day with all I will have to cover, and how will I make lesson plans around technology?” Dr. Strange assigned your “Back to the Future” video cast as one of our final assignments. The way you inspire students and overcome a language barrier by using creative projects and technology has given me hope. I will be purchasing your book and have already saved your blog post to my Symbaloo PLN. Thank you for showing that teachers that care about technology, learning, and feelings of students really do exist. You have been the “Yin” to my “EDM 310 Yang”.
Sincerely,
Christie Mason
The book looks very promising. I start a teacher training program at the University of British Columbia in September and have been assigning myself material to read and projects to complete in preparation. Starting my own personal blog and podcast have been an ongoing goal.
I shall add Making Connections part of my reading list. It looks like it will be a nice compliment to Curriculum 21 edited by Heidi Jacombs, a book I highly recommend.
I am happy to say that the book was wonderful and thank you for such a great resource. If you are interested in my review you can find it here:
http://dalecope.edublogs.org/?p=259
From Brian – Thanks Dale! – Glad you found the book helpfull!!!!
I believe that blogging is a great way to get people writing. I would love to get my students to do so. Thanks for the idea.
Hi Brian,
I’m so happy to see that there are teachers out there who are teaching the students to write online responsibly. There are so many “hit and run” comments being left by young people who feel that, just because they are not being held accountable for what they write (example YouTube comments section), they can write whatever trash they want. Blogs are a great way for students to reach out to others and connect in a meaningful way. Good work!
I am a student of Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class, at the University of South Alabama, in Mobile, Alabama. Thank you for letting me view your blog site. I plan on going to the book store tomorrow and getting the book “Making Connections With Blogging”. I think the book would help anyone that has not done blogging before, and the ones that have done blogging, to give them new ideas. I think all teacher’s should use blogging in their curriculum to change how learning happens. You are doing a wonderful job with student’s, and you should hope all future teacher’s would learn from you.
Blogging seems to have an endless variety of applications; and it can be confusing and frustrating for beginners to incorporate it in the classroom. However, this book seems to present some clearly defined ideas and suggestions for using blogs as instructional tools.
Based on the reviews here, I am anxious to get my hands on this book. There is similarly useful one that was required reading for a graduate course I just completed. I highly recommend it: Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., Kuhn, M., & Maleoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
This sounds great .. looking forward to finding out more about this. Blogging is a new venture that our teachers are taking so very interested to try and get a copy of this. I am a teacher from Australia and just started my teacher blog today so would love any advice you might have (if you have any time to spare 🙂