ICT

Tom Barrett is a Year 5 classroom teacher, ICT Subject Leader and Assistant Headteacher in a large primary school in Nottinghamshire. He has been blogging about the implementation of technology in his classroom for over three years.

A few years ago when I first began to uncover the new types of online tools available blogs and wikis were pretty much the first things I encountered. Starting a blog aboutmy own work with technology and learning in 2006 was the beginning of a great learning curve for me.

Nowadays teachers are blessed with a huge array of tools and social media platforms to explore. However blogs and wikis have persisted in their usefulness. Although they have sometimes been reinvented or given a makeover, they still retain certain core functions.

• Wiki is taken from the Hawaiian word for "fast", a wiki allows lots of different users access to edit and create content. Driven by a simple text editor, a wiki can be a focal point for a community of users to share resources and create content. Wikipedia is of course the most widely known.

• A Blog is a simple, online platform for publishing content. Blog posts are published in chronological order and each one has the facility for the audience to comment on what they read. The community of teachers and educators blogging/writing is rich and diverse.

• Use a Google Blog Search to find different types of blogs in different categories.

• Blogger is the Google platform for creating your own blog. Watch out for the random "Next Blog" link in the top navigation bar if you have a class or school blog.

• Posterous has redefined the way that people have blogged. With Posterous all you have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com and you have written a post. It even allows you to setup your Posterous blog via email. Send an email with photos or video attached and these will be embedded in a blog post. It does not offer the same personalisation and widgetry of other platforms but is a highly recommended lightweight tool for blogging.

• Moblogging is using a mobile phone to blog photos. Many mobile phones allow you to do this by linking up with tools such as Blogger. Moblogging is a useful form of communication for parents during field trips and residential visits.

• Phlogging is all about recording a short audio post using your phone. Tools such as iPadio are great for dealing with this sort of method and you can then embed what you create elsewhere. Suzi Bewell is a languages teacher and has begun using it in class - here is one example of her using it with Year 10 students.

• Wordpress is a popular open source blog publishing application. It is user friendly and powers the blogs of millions of people around the world. Services like Wordpress multi-user. Get some web hosting and install Wordpress to get started, or even just get a free blog from Wordpress themselves.

• Edublogs is a free service for creating blogs for teachers and students.

• Sandaig Primary School was the first school blog that I ever encountered and continues to set the bar for school blogs. Make sure that you explore the older site for examples of moblogging on their Netherlands trip and their use of a wiki too.

• Robin Hood Primary is another good example of a primary school using blogs across the school.

• Google Sites is another excellent online application from Google. It allows the quick creation of web spaces which can be kept private or open to invited colleagues.

• There are a range of dedicated wiki tools to be found including Wikispaces,Wetpaint and PBWiki. All of them have slight differences, but essentially do the same job.

• Google Docs is another Google tool that has some elements of a wiki. You can invite collaborators to edit and create with you. Although essentially a web office tool it's functionality has changed the way we create simple documents. See "Interesting Ways to use a Wiki" below for an example.

• Microblogging tools such as Twitter can be considered a condensed version of blogging. Microblogging is easy to do and requires less investment in time - but it is very simplified so has its drawbacks. Tumblr and Plurk are other examples of this style of blogging.

• As I mentioned above, each blog post created is open to comments. This is essential as the readers feel they can contribute and respond to content published. This set of commenting guidelines for students and adults from Vicki Davis is essential reading.

• So you have found a heap of education blogs - how do you manage reading them and how do you know when new content is published? Each blog will have an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed which you can subscribe to. Use an RSS Reader like Google Reader or Newsgator. This will give you one place to see all of your favourite blogs and will automatically update as new content is written. Try this Commoncraft film for more help on RSS.

• I began a Google Presentation; Interesting Ways to use a Wiki in the Classroom, and invited fellow educators to contribute ways they have used wikis in the classroom. I hope that you find something that may inspire you in it.

Please take a look at my blog ICT in My Classroom or my microblog on Twitter.