Threaded Discussion

I'm trying to find the right tool for an online book discussion for kids. I set up a blog and it looks fine. It would work fine if I didn't want to be able to respond to student posts and allow them to comment on others' posts. I realize now I've picked the wrong tool for the job.

I've successfully done book discussions before with Blackboard but our district has switched to Moodle. So far I find Moodle cumbersome because you have to post the questions in reverse order--I might have to use it but first I want to see if there are any good tools available for threaded discussions for kids.

I've seen Nicenet and Google Groups but don't like the way they look. I've even considered opening a ning group. Does anybody know of a free threaded discussion tool that would be good for kids? Thanks in advance.

Tags: blogging, ning, socialnetworking

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 28, 2007 at 8:31pm

I don't know what phpBB is but I'll find out. I am not the site manager of http://areallydifferentplace.org our class blog, but the student's dad that edits it seems to be able to do everything with it. We blog, students write books, we have links, we have RSS feed coming in. I've been thrilled with it so far (we've been blogging since November). I decided to put the book discussion forum there, it gives me exactly what I want and the kids are familiar with "the look".

I have access to Moodle, but it was not intutive to me---and you have to put the questtions in backwards so the newest/Question 1 will be at the top. I did book discussions with Blackboard for several years and love it--but too expensive.

As I said it a previous post, I don't like wikis for much else besides "wikipedia-type reearch because I don't like the way they look! I know I'm shallow. Later-N

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on September 3, 2007 at 8:48pm

Is "Chat" live? Thanks for the suggestion, but I think I've found the right tool. I'm using a threaded discussion on our Drupal blog. http://areallydifferentplace.org/node/659 I haven't spent enough time with Moodle, it's not intuitive with me, yet. N.

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Permalink Reply by Amy Capelle on September 5, 2007 at 4:39pm

I kind of scanned all the other replies, but how about setting up something like a discussion board on proboards.com (or one of the other free discussion board creators)? There are tons of free discussion boards creation tools online. Just google it and look through the free sites available. I think you can set those to private and moderate the board.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on September 7, 2007 at 6:01pm

After all the discussion on threaded discussions in this forum I finally settled on Moodle for my book discussions. It seemed to work (even though I liked Blackboard better) and the district just switched over so I thoughtI might make some brownie points by trying it out. N.