So this is pretty cool - my blog is highlighted in this month's nationwide eChalk users newsletter! If you're visiting because of this newsletter, welcome to Rialto in southern California! I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my experiences blogging and point out some things I've done with this blog.
 
When eChalk said they were adding blogs a year ago, I wasn't that excited. I'd never blogged before and couldn't really think of any value it would have for me. I was already using eChalk's group pages to post links and resources for my teachers. I thought of blogs as personal ramblings that weren't really relevant to professional tasks. However, I quickly discovered just how valuable a blog can be.
 
If you check out the Categories section in the left sidebar, you can see the purposes I have found for using a blog in my role as the District Technology Integration Coach. One use I find extremely valuable is to post meeting minutes. We used to type up the meeting minutes, send them out to committee members as an email attachment, and print copies for the next meeting. With a blog there are several benefits:

• Timeliness: Minutes are now available quickly - no need to format a document, no need for people to download a file from email and start another application on their computer
• Access: Anyone can read the minutes and subscribe to the RSS feed. They can subscribe to just the committee minutes part of the blog or my entire blog.
• Auto-archive: A blog automatically archives all your minutes! No worries about keeping track of files on your computer.
• Searchable: If you have ever had to search through multiple files trying to find the minutes of when your committee discussed a particular topic, you will LOVE the fact that you can just type a keyword in the search box and instantly access every time your committee discussed that topic. This is also handy for in-meeting review of previous discussions - you can instantly display all previous minutes about the topic to refresh everyone's memory or bring new members up-to-speed.

In addition to meeting minutes, I use my blog to share "Tech Tidbits" with anyone who's interested. Often I'll be working with a teacher and show him/her some little trick, some new gadget or a great resource and they say, "You should tell everyone about that!" Well, now I can! If I sent those kinds of things via email, some would consider it annoying spam and start ignoring my emails, including the ones they really need to pay attention to. So, I just throw these tidbits up on my blog; every once in a while I send out an email that lists several recent posts in one message, along with a reminder to subscribe to my blog if they like the information. Then when I share that idea again with someone else, I can refer them back to my blog. This has been very handy as I interact with various groups in and outside of the district.
 
I've also experimented with using my blog as a presentation tool. I upload my PowerPoint to iGoogle and then embed the presentation in a new blog post directed to the audience that day. It allows me to tailor my content to the particular audience, but saves me from having to create and maintain a unique webpage for each group. And since I give them my blog URL as the location for the training materials, they also benefit from easy access to all my latest ideas when they revisit the site. (So what if it's a little self-promoting!)
 
So, needless to say, I am now a blog fanatic. I hope to explore the application of blogs to the classroom with more teachers next year. And, I am anticipating additional management features of eChalk in the summer that would allow us to investigate the viability of student blogging within the schools' private area of eChalk. So stay tuned!

If you have used a blog for education-related activities, please submit a comment and share the benefits and/or challenges you have experienced. Thanks for visiting, come back soon!