Need a blog for students to use

Looking for some help. I want to use blogging in grade 9. What bogging site would teachers who have used one recommend to use? Advantages/disadvantages/tips/etc. We cannot enter personal student info such as phone numbers so that needs to be avoided.

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kate Hughes on June 26, 2011 at 11:11pm

Use Wordpress - i use it with a Year 4 class, I set it up and do the entries myself but the students are able to comment back. You can set it so they dont need an email etc to comment. Later in the year I plan to let the students themselves add entries. Its very easy to follow and set up.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on June 27, 2011 at 11:20am

I really like WordPress and use it myself for giving information to staff and students.

Kate do you use some paid-for option? Perhaps I am misunderstanding Year 4? (That's quite small people in the UK!). Don't students have to be 13 to use WordPress? I was wondering how you plan to let students add entries?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kate Hughes on June 28, 2011 at 5:51pm

Hi there - we are a year 4 class (9-10yr olds) any use of the internet at my school is covered by a cyber agreement and part of that is any blogging is only done under teacher direction. We sort of say that this covers us for the age thing. The content, words etc is the students BUT the teacher controls the blog. Hope this makes sense!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on July 1, 2011 at 12:23pm

That makes sense Kate - thank you.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kelly Walsh on June 27, 2011 at 11:35am

Hi Wanda -

Another good option is Edublogs. Here's a link to a video about getting started w/Edublogs: http://www.youtube.com/user/EmergingEdTech#p/u/49/3FIk653lvkk.

Here's a blog post about student blogging that you might find informative: http://www.emergingedtech.com/2010/08/blogging-in-education-today-p.... A couple of the example blogs are Edublogs blogs.

Good luck!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Doug Walker on June 28, 2011 at 1:10pm

Take a look at Kid Blog. I wrote about it on my blog here http://blogs.jefftwp.org/wordpress/walker/2011/02/22/student-bloggi.... It is easy to use. It is free. A teacher can manage and moderate student blogs from one simple interface.

http://kidblog.org/home.php

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Katie Muhtaris on July 7, 2011 at 3:45pm

Kidblog all the way! It's simple, straightforward and it gives you the control you need while students are learning about digital citizenship.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Vibha Sheth on June 28, 2011 at 4:52pm

I have used blogspot for primary year students. It works well. I would suggest to set ground rules for blogging before you start. Some kind of essential agreement for blogging where by students are involved in making this essential agreement.

regards

Vibha Sheth

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kate Hughes on June 28, 2011 at 5:52pm

Hi there- we have a cyber safety/ ICT use agreement that we ensure that all students and parents sign it. This acts as the basis for individual classroom essiential agreements.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kshitij Ahuja on July 7, 2011 at 12:59pm

Wanda,

Wordpress MU is a good blogging platform. It is a multi-user version of Wordpress blogging software and comes fully loaded with all the features you would expect in a single user version of wordpress blogging software. The advantage is that you do not have to install wordpress individually for all the users who want to have a blog. Just do it once with MU version and the rest is all about creating usernames and passwords for those who want to have a blog.

We implemented it last year for Middle School and the response has been overwhelming.

Here are a few pros I can pull over the top of my head :

Can be installed on your local server (on-campus intranet) which is important since all the data remains under your control.
It allows you to pick specific themes/plugins which you can in-turn allow your users (teachers and students) to pick from, for their blogs. This is to restrict the themes and plugins to those which meet the policy/guidelines of your school.
Each user gets a unique blog url making their blog easily accessible.
You can tie up logins using LDAP to the installation so the users get authenticated from your Windows AD.

Oh - and I just found out that the MU version has been integrated with the single user version of the wordpress.

If you have any specific questions about Wordpress, please feel free to ask.