Part of Lesson Plan: Intro to Blogging

Activity Overview / Details

Finally, after students have submitted their completed questions, teacher will facilitate a conversation about blogs, using the following questions:

-How are blogs and websites different? What are some of those differences?

Teacher should make sure the discussion includes the following:  blogs are chronologically based, blogs may be difficult to organize by content or topic,  blogs may or may not have static landing page, navigation of a blog site may be unweildy or not as streamlined as a traditional webpage. 

-When might it be good to use a blog?  When might you want to avoid using a blog?

Teacher may use the notes from the Hook to remind students that blogs are good to display diary entries, breaking news, new music, etc.   A school website would be a good example of when a blog would be ineffective.  It would be difficult for parents/students to find specific information and documents without the use of traditional navigational tools like menus and breadcrumbs found on website, instead of a blog.

-Who should use blogs?  How and why would a business use a blog?  When would they want to use a website instead?

Teacher should identify a few sites known to students that would provide examples of good applications of blogs such as- Facebook, Huffington Post or Mashable which are good examples. Some examples of where blogs would not be a good example may include Safeway or Amazon where a long list of items would prove difficult for customers to navigate.

-What are some possible ideas students have for creating blogs of their own?
Students may want to blog about their favorite athlete or musician, or perhaps their own lives.  Remind students that a blog will require multiple entries, so they want to choose a topic that will not stifle their writing opportunities.  Instead of a specific athlete, they may want to make their blog a little broader, allowing them to focus on additional information if writing about a specific athlete proves too difficult. Also remind students that if they are going to blog about their lives, it will need to be appropriate for school, as these are public blogs they are creating.

-Remind students that they will be blogging about this topic for several lessons so it should be a topic they have interest in.

After the completing the lesson, students should have a clear idea of how a blog and website serve different purposes and the limitations and opportunities presented in using a blog.