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It worked! 

However, I still like my edublogs better as I can put tags (categories) on my posts and have a list of them on the side.  I also can create separate pages (see tabs under the blog title) for other content.

So how did Mike, from BlinkList, find my posting on my blog so fast? (see “Web Feeds and Readers” post)  I went straight to the source and asked him myself.  He used technorati, a blog search engine.   How does this search engine work?  According to their site,

“Because Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.”

You can search by keyword, website URL, or the tag which the blogger has assigned to the post.  Very cool.  Thanks for the recommendation, Mike. 

Other Blog Search Engines include: Blogdigger, Bloglines, BlogPulse, BlogSearchEngine, Bloogz, Daypop, Feedster, Google Blog Search, IceRocket and PubSub.  The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about this called “New Search Engines
Help Users Find Blogs.”

The ariticle states:

“High schools, colleges and businesses have begun to use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Xanga to keep tabs on students and employees.”

Although these are social networking sites, people need to realize that they are publishing content for all to see.  They are also recorded history which can haunt them later.

“Job recruiters say students’ lack of discretion online will catch up to them in their professional lives. A 2005 study by executive job-search agency ExecuNet found that 75 percent of recruiters use Web searching as part of the applicant screening process, according to a Columbia News Service report. More than a quarter of these same recruiters say they have eliminated candidates based on information they found online.”

1.  Description of technology

2.  How it will be used

3.  What security measures have been put in place

4.  Teacher’s expectations of students

See Susan Sedro’s Example – Blogging Letter to Parents

http://tim.lauer.name/

http://mt.middlebury.edu/middblogs/ganley/bgblogging

www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/

I read with interest the views of the technology coordinator from District 211 as my sons go there.  I would love to see the educators in this excellent district take advantage of this tool. 

Two interesting applications were given from other school districts:

First Grade – “There is a scientist and environmental children’s author living on an island near Washington State named Ron Hirschi who sent us a piece of sea creature in a box with clues to help my 1st graders identify what it was,” Newton said. “We blog back and forth with him, and my kids sent him things with clues to see if he could identify them.”

High School – At the high school level, Frances Harris, a librarian at the University Laboratory High School in Urbana, says the blog site at her school allows students to comment and interact with the student newspaper.

I will add these to my educational example page.

Thanks for a wonderful day Susim and Susan.

There was so much great information that I have decided to just list comments which he made which resonated with me:

1.  Education is a conversation not a monolog. (I think this is my newest favorite quote, hence the name of this blog.)

2.  Teachers will say “publish it” not “hand it in”.

3.  Just because we don’t get MySpace, it will not stop students from using it. (as a mother of 2 teenagers, this hit home)

4.  Wikipedia is a passonate community contributing to a resource.

Thanks, Will, for an enlightening day. Still waiting for my book… Guess I should of ordered it directly from you instead of Amazon!