EDU Blog review number four

Blog Review: http://bib20.blogspot.com/

The author of this blog, Jeri Hurd, has created an interesting blog linking an interest in teaching English, running a library and integrating technology.  She started in 2007 and has consistently updated.  Of course this interested me since I am trying to integrate technology into my library teaching and also have taken on a new role the past couple of years teaching middle school English and Social Studies. 

The post on the home page is “It’s Time to Get Seriously Angry” which piqued my curiosity and also made me jump to conclusions that this is a more political blog.  It turns out that she usually reserves her political commentary to her facebook but was really worked up about Illinois dropping the writing part of their standardized test.  She advocates political action.  I spent a long time perusing the blog.  Her info page indicates that she is an American although some posts show her to be in Mongolia.  I found that a little bit confusing.  Navigating the blog is not super easy as the Home Page is pretty convoluted.  However, that is because there is just so much she shares.

That said, there are several things on this blog that were great.  If you teach high school, there is a neat project with rubrics on “Animoto book trailers” and also on “creating a documentary”.  She seems to work with scripts and story boards which I think is very engaging for students.  She wrote an interesting post on Assessment which the crux was that teachers who assess get respect.  She provides several assessment tools as well.  She recommends pros and cons of several programs and lesson plans.  One to note is Common Sense Media with several lesson plans for each grade about how to protect their reputation in a digital world and exploring their identity.  I bookmarked this to explore later.  She also has an app called “goodreads” including Global Achievement Gap, Teaching Digital Generation which is an interesting sharing tool.  She also shared eschool news which updates Technology News for Today’s K20 Educator.