Thoughts on Edublogs

As a history teacher I was naturally drawn to Eric Langhorst's blog Speaking of History. Mr. Langhorst blogs about a variety of topics including his own classroom, conferences he has attended and spoken at, and tools that he uses in the classroom. It was the variety of tools that he blogs about that really sucked me into his blog. He uses a variety of different google functions that I didn't even know existed to make teaching history a more fun, realistic experience for his students. He combines Google's street maps function with a trip planner and a landscape time lapse in order to teach his students geography. This is very relevant to me as it is something that my mentor teacher and I are struggling with in our classroom right now. We typically assign map assignments for the students to complete out of the textbook but there is no exploration and it becomes a task in following directions rather than a geographic exploration. The tools that Mr. Langhorst discusses on his blog are very useful for history teachers and I urge my fellow historians to click on the link above and check it out!

As far as another edublog goes, I decided to check out Teachers at Risk. Something about the title of the blog drew me to it and the first blog was about the difference between teasing and bullying. This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately because we have been focusing on bullying at my placement quite a bit recently. I also decided to check out the documentary Bully which I would encourage my fellow classmates to check out. But anyway, the blog that I commented on gave a clear definition of bullying but was unclear about their thoughts on teasing. Bullying is a repetitive behavior that is that is intentional, aggressive, and negative and typically exists in a relationship where there is an imbalance of power. Bullying is a serious problem and one that needs attention. However, the purpose of my blog comment was to probe the author on her thoughts about teasing and how quickly teasing can escalate and how damaging one isolated comment can have on students. Although the blog drew a lot of attention to bullying, I felt like the issues associated with teasing were brushed over. Teasing in the classroom is something that I look for and mediate because I think it is important that all of my students feel safe and comfortable in my classroom.