Best Practices in Educational Blogging

People write better when they know that they have an audience.  This applies to children as well.
When starting to blog with students a discussion about safety is important.  Students should understand the risks and benefits of being online.  There are many great Internet Safety websites like netsmartzkids, AT&T Safety Land, and Privacy Playground.  Students should be told to not include personal information into their blog posts.  For instance, students can sign their post with their student number, or initials and then comment as anonymous.  Students in our district can use their Google Docs logins to comment.  Having the comment moderation feature on is key.  If students do respond with too much information the teacher can simply not publish their comments.   If you have never blogged with your students it may be helpful to educate the parents on blogging.  I have been blogging with students for many years.  Our school district provides parents with information on Acceptable Use policies.  There is an opt out form but there are very few parents that opt out their children from such activities.  It is very important as a teacher to investigate your district's policy on the Internet and specifically blogging.


Education World


Blogging Webquest 

Sample Blog Acceptable Use

Ten More Ways to Use a Blog

Watch this simple video by Richard Byrne from his Blog entitled (Free Technology for Teachers) http://www.freetech4teachers.com/p/creating-effective-blogs-websites.html


Ten Ways to use a blog in your classroom


Here are some ideas that I came up for blogging.  Please respond with any ideas you have.

1. Each year I create a blog celebrating teachers and staff that are returning.  Kids are invited to share memories and well wishes. This is a great writing prompt for the whole school.  You could pair up older kids with younger kids to get everyone involved.
2. Reading responses for reading assignments are great way to use a blog. The more open ended the question the better.
3. A blog can be a great way of communicating homework to students and to families.
4.  A blog is a great way for students to post information about current events.
5. Writing a review is always a good writing assignment. Students can write a review of a restaurant, book, movie etc.  The great thing about blogging the review rather than a traditional writing assignment is that it gives students and audience.  Others can can comment on their reviews.
6. Attention student council advisors,  Why not  start a student council blog with the secretary? This would be a great way for kids to contribute their  ideas.  One could poll kids on school issues.
7. Homework helper blogging where students can get helpful links, videos, podcasts on classroom topics could be very useful.  Kids can go in and ask questions.  Kid experts can give help and advice.  For instance, kids who are good at math can explain math concepts, while kids are good at writing can help kids edit their work.  There could be a parent corner that they could provide help within their area of expertise.  Also students can share their favorite educational websites with each other.
9.  Creating an ongoing career day with parents of the class could be another use of a blog.  Parents can in a write a post about what they do for a living.  Students could respond to three people who have a career they may be interested in with three questions about the career.  Parents can respond back to their questions.  Perhaps you could bring in community members with other careers to expand the options.  A grade level career blog could also expand the idea.  School administrators could join in by talking with the kids about their jobs.
10. Historical blogs in which a student pretends to be living in a time period like The American Revolution could be very interesting.   Almost like Facebook, they could blog about their daily life and what is going on politically.  You could have the loyalists and patriots debate each other .

Click on the links to find out more about educational blogging.

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