A bit about me ...

I am a Professor of Professional Studies at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. I am responsible for the design and development of the technology instruction taken by juniors and seniors in the College of Education. I have been teaching for over 40 years. In 1972 I became Dean of the College of Professional and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts/Boston and served in that capacity until 1979 when I was named Vice President of the Council for the Advancement of Experiential Learning. I came to "South" in 1988 to develop a program in multimedia.

This blog is an example for my students in EDM 310, the technology course all Education majors must take.

... and what this blog is about.
I have a class blog every semester. You can take a look at my Spring 2009 Class Blog if you wish. From there you can connect to the blog sites maintained by all my students and to previous EDM 310 blogs. In this exercise I am asking students to create another blog in which they discuss six or more "teaching tools" or teaching attitudes they intend to apply in their classrooms when they begin their professional career. I have done the same in this blog as an example for my students.

In this blog you will find a discussion, and sometimes examples or links to examples, of these Teaching Tools: Blogs, Google Presentations, Google Documents, Google Forms, Google Spreadsheets, Picasa, and Podcasts.

Links to these examples can be found to your left, immediately under my picture.


Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Blogs as Teaching Tools

I believe blogs are a very important teaching tool. They have many uses including: providing a space for: links to students' work, links to important blogs, web sites, audio and video materials, or documents (including those in .pdf format); a summary of class assignments; support materials for students; presentations done in Google Presentation or other presentation software (including PowerPont).

Student blogs provide space for students to write reports that are public, post pictures or presentations that are useful in the class, and create links to materials that they are worth sharing.

Blogs have other positive attributes:

  • They are free!

  • They provide for comments from others and those comments can be monitored before they appear if that is desired. Comments can also be removed by either the sender or the recipient.

  • They can be private, public, or limited to a specific audience.

  • They can be accessed anywhere in he world where there is internet access.


Many examples exist of blogs used in all grade levels of types of educatinal institutions. Search using Google's specialized Google Blog search engine or consult the sites recommended by my students.

To access the blogs of my students, go first to EDM310 Class Blog Fall 08 (my class blog). You will find the appropriate links to student blogs on the right side of the class blog.
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