If you are interested in using new web technology for teaching, you should take a look at blist. We are finding a lot of organic interest from teachers using blist in two distinct ways.

First, blist is great for classroom administration – being a database, you can start with one row per student, add yearbook photo in one column, upload homework as a Word document, or other file in another column, and then create a whole table within a cell for each student to keep track of grades for each student on each assignment in each class.

Second and more subtly, some teachers are using blist to teach computer and database concepts to students in a visual and intuitive way. For instance, the idea of a database itself as a collection of two-dimensional tables connected together in specific ways can be hard to conceptualize, but is easy to show using blist’s table within a cell feature.

TeachersFirst, an online resource and community for educators recently reviewed blist and provided these ideas for using blist in the classroom:

Possible uses: Teach about data collection and analysis using this tool on your interactive whiteboard or projector. The highly visual, drag and drop interface will make data manipulation work more intuitively for your students to understand. Let them click and drag to create a blist and resulting graphs from surveys the class conducts. If you are comfortable allowing students to use the tool, create an inventory of books read independently with reviews, ratings and more. Students can add to it from home and collect credit for outside readings or find books based on others’ reviews. Collect lab data, have groups collect data on famous people, inventors, or historic events. Compare consumer goods. Share important dates and checklists for major projects by allowing student and parents to VIEW (not edit) a database you create. Assign students to evaluate and compare different web resources as part of a class research assignment.

You can read the rest of the review here.

The TeachersFirst Edge Team conveniently created a blist with even more ideas for classroom use.