The first blog that I viewed was the blog from the teacher of year out in Missouri Mr. Langhourst. I thought since he taught history then he might have some useful information for me since I too want to teach social studies in the future. It was cool because students could go onto his website and check out all of his pod casts that were going with the lessons of the current week, and of course as soon as the screen popped up much of it was about the current presidential election. He had a lot of useful “stuff” on there about how the school was participating in a mock election, and how exactly the school was doing it. The blog clearly has different audiences, many times it is the parents when they want to see what is going on the classroom, but if the students want to get a deeper understanding of what is going on in the classroom: such as the cool lesson that he has on the Declaration of Independence and the Election through pod casting then they could. The purpose of this blog was to be informative to his students, fellow teachers in how they teach students, and parents if they want to know what is going on with their students education. This blog is still very active he continues to post pictures of activities that he does when he is away from the classroom and most recently he posted something from the election after Obama won with “President in Transition and a link to his website. I think this tool is great I love how he utilized this tool in that it is not so much used as a way to make his students do work through technology, but a way to help them, inform, and allow them to get to know him on a level that is their own.
The next blog that I used was Ms. Huff’s English class and thought that this was very much a different turn from the one that I viewed earlier. However, that does not mean it was bad just different. I t was certainly a very informative blog and was used for the students and parents to keep them updated on the assignments for the next and upcoming days if they happen to miss anything then they could make it up. However there did not seem to be very much technology utilized within this blog, but the students and the parents did stay updated. It does appear that the blog is still up and running and the teacher keeps everyone updated on the events going on within all of her classrooms. I think it could be good tool especially reminding students of the safety issues on the web and maybe adding a little technology to the blog.