Having read several blog entries on How To Use Micro-/Blogging (like Kerry Turner’s and Laura Walker’s), I started looking for blogs that actually make use of these theoretical approaches. Turns out theory is very different from real life: I hardly found anything worthwhile, so this post is, again, mostly about theories on Web 2.0 apps as learning tools.
Nevertheless, there were some blogs I found which seemed to be somewhat successful approaches to using technology in non-IT subjects:
- Grundkurs Deutsch (http://gk-deutsch.blogspot.com/).
The owner of Grundkurs Deutsch is Peter Ringeisen, teacher in Bavaria, who has set up this blog in 2004 and has been using it with several courses. The layout is quite plain, and it is a mixture of student-generated content and recommendations posted by the teacher (aka rip). The student-generated content is often just written homework, so not really very Web 2.0-y, but sometimes they create videos or share recommendations about books etc. The teacher posts new tasks or interesting projects from other schools. He’s doing the same for his Leistungskurs Englisch (http://djd-elks.blogspot.com/), and the students there seem to get even more into the community aspect of using a blog for their course.
All in all, these blogs certainly aren’t perfect, but students make frequent use of them, so it obviously works and is at least a step in the direction of using EdTech in school.
Posted by druhh 
