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"Blogging is becoming more and more popular in the classroom. Teachers can blog to stay in touch with parents and students or they can incorporate blogs from all of the students as a learning tool. The beauty of the student blog is that children from Kindergarten to high school can blog. No matter how you use blogs in your classroom, these tools will help you get started, enhance your experience, or bring the students into the fun."

Reading blogs doesn't have to be an exercise in futility or a waste of time. Your blog addiction can serve you well by with these blogs that are sure to make you smarter. These blogs bring you information about politics, technology, art, literature, an international perspective on life and culture, and much more. Become a regular reader of these blogs and who knows how intelligent you will be in the end.

Education blogs are becoming a means for educators, students, and education administrators to interact more effectively than ever before. Technorati currently tracks 63.1 million blogs. Over 5,000 of them are about education. It is likely that there are hundreds, if not thousands, more education-related blogs on the Web. (UPDATE: There are over 30,000 blogs hosted at edublogs.org alone. Thanks James Farmer!) Here is a list of our staff's 100 favorites.

"When I asked my students recently how blogging in class makes a difference to them, they had lots to say. Blogging has allowed them to meet students from all over the world and discover new interests. It's also helped them improve their technology skills and write more on assignments than they could if they had to use paper and pencil. But for the teacher, bringing blogging into the classroom can be both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. No doubt about it, making the decision to try student blogging is an act of courage. With that in mind, I'd like to share eight things I've learned that can help ensure your brave step is also a wise and successful one for you and your kids. "

"In collaboration with my colleague Mike Hutchinson, I have begun to introduce the tools of the Read/Write web to my students. Specifically, my class is now blogging and podcasting. Blogging and podcasting has allowed me to create a forum where my students discuss current events connected to our social studies curriculum while developing language arts skills like critical thinking and persuasive dialogue. It has also given my students the opportunity to be creators-rather than simply consumers-of online content. Finally, blogging and podcasting have given my students an audience for their ideas, which has increased levels of interest and motivation."

What I've pulled for you today are blogs divided by subject and grade level for you to quickly reference, but I do encourage you to explore blogs outside of your curriculum, as well. Some are classroom blogs. Others are teacher reflections. A few are teaching strategies with classroom resources, and there are even some from outside education, but relate to your curriculum.

In this series of lessons, students learn the purpose of an electronic portfolio; use Google Blogger to create such a portfolio of their best work, including multimedia extensions as desired; and respond to each other's work online using the Comments feature of the blogs. Teachers create a basic class website from which to link to each blog. This fosters an online community in which students can easily move from blog to blog to view and respond to each other's content.

Blogs offer an excellent way for communities to come together over a common interest despite physical location. Educators can take advantage of this shared pool of knowledge to find inspiration, enhance their teaching, and help students learn more. The following blog posts come from a variety of bloggers sharing their passion and insight.

"Education technology has many supporters in its movement to alter traditional teaching methods. This list of the top 50 education technology blogs includes writers, technicians and social media experts…but they all are teachers. The "movers" are teachers who facilitate learning among other teachers and in the classroom, the "shakers" teach new philosophies and innovations, and the folks "on the ground" offer news, tools and methods of using those tools in the classroom. This list is divided into those three categories, and each link within those categories is listed alphabetically. The links lead straight to the recently updated blogs, and the descriptions supply information about that blogger's achievements, including careers and jobs."

"As the Reading Workshop students begin to blog regularly (see links in the sidebar), one might question, what do you want the students to get out of this project? How will it help them? Are the benefits academic and or social? Listed below are the goals and benefits of student blogs. "

Great resource for blogging Principals and those who want to learn from blogging Principals

This page has been set up so you can check out different types of class blogs to get ideas for your own class blog. You could also use this list to make connections with classes in other countr

"Here are 5 reasons why we are making student blogging and portfolio development a high priority." Great blog post highlighting the reasons why you would do eportfolios with students.

Awesome resource for any teacher wishing to integrate Blogs into their classroom.

64 Interesting Ideas* for Class Blog Posts

This blog is not officially affiliated with Google. Google Earth Blog is dedicated to sharing the best news, interesting sights, technology, and happenings for Google Earth. You will find the most amazing and interesting Google Earth news stories and content you can download right off the site. Learn how to take data from your GPS, map it into Google Earth, and share it with friends or the world. Learn when new releases of Google Earth come out, hear about new technologies and features, or check out the links to dozens of other Google Earth web sites.

I have listed every blog post that has a video tutorial that shows how to create something related to online learning. So, if you're just getting started with building online learning courses (or new to the blog), now you have a handy resource with links to all sorts of rapid elearning tutorials.

 Blogs, Wikis, Docs: Which is right for your lesson? A Comparison Table

A list of resources about guidelines for Blogs in class.

Blog Reflection Rubric