HELP! I need a Blog Sites for my students

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Permalink Reply by Vincent Mespoulet on January 12, 2008 at 8:38am

Why don't you create a multiblog site with ning for your students ? I'm not quite sure that a priori restrictions are the best way to develop good behavior and responsabilization of students. You can explain strict rules about the use of your multiblog. This is the way i have chosen when i created my european educational network. I teach in a french middle school and i had the same problems than you. But since the creation of School Beyond the Walls, no big problem... The threat to bannishment if bad behavior is enough to avoid problems for me...

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Permalink Reply by Julia Osteen on January 12, 2008 at 10:26am

I use classblogmeister with my students. It is a project of David Warlick and the Landmark project. Students' posts and any comments come to me via email for approval before they are seen. Also, you can further protect the blogs by adding a class password. You would just go to the classblogmeister home page and send an email to David Warlick requesting a school passcode. Once you have that you can register yourself on the site; then set up your blog and your students blogs. There is a whole community that surrounds class blogmeister which includes educators from all over the world. Over 131,000 bloggers use the tool. There is a great potential for collaboration (a tool was designed to help educators connect). My class blog is at the following address: http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=17192 Feel free to take a look and email me if you have any questions.

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on January 12, 2008 at 1:24pm

Have you tried www.21classes.com? I'm experimenting with them right at this very moment. They appear to allow for teacher approval of all posts, and the first 50 students are on at no charge. This might be what you need.

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on January 12, 2008 at 3:34pm

Thanks so much frr all the suggestions. Teaching proper Net behavior- while I agree with you in theory Vincent-I am stationed at a private school and not only would the student be banished from the site by me-any other child or parent that saw it-and it would be my fault and thus my job for allowing it to happen!

I am still running my server on Novell and have very little server space. Basically the server is used to distribute print services and allow filtered internet access. So I cannot host .

No need to explain to most you that every now and then there is a class with a few children that simply have to know that there is oversight and that they are responsible for their behavior. Those are same children who do not always represent their participation in events accurately and whose parents believe them. Even though they are a small part of the class the other students and the class as well , don't get to participate in much becaue the other teachers are afraid of what a few of them will do.

I choose to do things differently and keep my expectaions high. It took time but the class really bloomed and I managed to turn most of them around and engage them in the process. Many of the other students have found moments to stop by the class at other times of the day and actually thank me for teaching them and not letting __ and _____ destroy the class. So the last thing I have hesitated over is blogging. I realyy love the collaborative aspects but-I do need my job as well.


So for right now I am going to look into Julia and James ideas. i guess at this point I don't think a little oversight is a bad thing. It will allow the students to post with only a slight delay to get on the sight.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Walker on January 12, 2008 at 9:15pm

I made a teachers guide for doing just this using edublogs. If you follow the steps it will require you to approve everything before it appears, both posts and comments. http://teachertechblog.com/teachers-guide-setup-and-configure-a-stu... Let me know if I can be of any more help!

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Permalink Reply by Arlene Anderson on January 12, 2008 at 10:52pm

Our IT designed a Student Community from the ELGG Open Source blogging site. He would gladly share it except for the server situation you have. Ours is housed on our district server. Any student entry is private until the teacher moves it to logged in users, or public. The same goes for comments. Once in a while a "guest" will make an inappropriate comment, so it never gets to the student.
I helped a teacher use blogmeister (the site mentioned above) last year and it worked fine except that no one knew where to go find the posts. Our Student Community is on our District website so it's easy to find. I do have to mention as I have on other posts, that each of our students who post have a signed permission/agreement slip that has the power to take away their account on the community for inappropriate posts, or comments.
Here's a link to our Student Community:
https://webapps.saugus.k12.ca.us/community4students/

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on January 13, 2008 at 10:35am

I set up WordPress MU on our school's shared server space. I set up students as "contributors." I also set it up so all comments are moderated. It gives you a pretty good handle on security--especially with the addition af a couple plugins.

I just started with a class blog a few days ago and set up blogs for each individual student later the same day. Right now I have them locked down so that only the student and I can access the blogs while they temporarily have more privileges so they can customize them. Once they are done with customization, I'll set them back to contributors and open their blogs to the world.

I haven't used edublogs, but you might look into it.

Make sure you are complying with school policies! I am in continuous conversation with my administrator and our tech committee.

If anyone is interested in installing, configuring, securing, and administrating WordPress MU for school, let me know!

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Permalink Reply by gordon brune on January 13, 2008 at 2:00pm

I'll second Julia's recommendation of BlogMeister. It's easy to set up a "student centered" blog. It's made to add students as contributors and it gives you the option to moderate all postings and comments.

I have played around with 21 classes and it, too, offers these options. Alan November's "November Learning Communities" also has these options.

I am so familiar with BM at this point that I'm reluctant to move to something else. I have considered using edublogs\learnerblogs but one benefit that I never anticipated was the community of users that I have gotten to know through the BM Yahoo discussion group. Not only is Julia a familiar name but I have developed several collaborations with other BM users. The discussion group is VERY helpful and supportive. This has been what has kept me a loyal BM user.

You can check out what my 5th graders have done with BM here. My only issue with BM at this point is not having a "link to" option so students can create hyperlinks to a website. As of now they either use html or just paste in the address which can be long at times.

I have played around with edublogs\learnerblogs and have also posted directions to set up a "student centered" blog using learnerblogs. Directions are here. It takes a lot more work to set up each student account. I use the "gmail trick" I describe in the directions to set up each student's email account and have it routed to my own gmail account. Edublogs does offer a lot more customization options if you're into that.

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on January 13, 2008 at 7:55pm

Thanks Gordan ,
I set up a BlogMeister account. I am finishing up grading for this semester . When next semester starts and I get my new Junior High studentsI am going to try using the blog site with them.

I really appreciate everyones help and advice

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