Setting up classroom & student blogs

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Permalink Reply by Richard Smart on July 24, 2008 at 5:54pm

Do you own any server space?

I wanted complete control so I have set up Word Press MU (multi-user) the same people who power Edublogs onto my server. It is easy to run and you have complete control over student activity...

Let me know if you need any more info...
Richard

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Permalink Reply by MaryKK on July 24, 2008 at 6:25pm

Class Blogmeister is definitely one you will want to check out - http://classblogmeister.com/

Mary

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Permalink Reply by kim on September 1, 2008 at 5:47pm

I have had a lot of trouble figuring this site out. How in the world are students able to write articles?

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Permalink Reply by Elona Hartjes on July 24, 2008 at 7:48pm

I started my classroom blog using www.edublogs.org but not the MU version. My students loved it. It's free and has lots of support for users. It was really simple to do. I like the security it gave me. I had complete control over who accessed the blog and what comments were published. I had the students write their work in the comment boxes. That worked well for me. You can go to my blog to see how it looks and works www.mrshartjes1.edublogs.org . If you have any questions ask me at ehartjes2 at sympatico dot ca. I'd be happy to help you in any way I can.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Walker on July 25, 2008 at 9:09am

I agree with Elona about using Edublogs. Here is a link to a post I wrote about it with a downloadable guide for setting it up with proper security settings. http://teachertechblog.com/teachers-guide-setup-and-configure-a-stu...

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on July 25, 2008 at 3:37pm

Hi Michelle, I started individual student blogs at the beginning of the year. We use globalstudent which is a campus of edublogs that our education department sponsors. However, I like edublogs as it allows you to have full control if you wish. A class of students can be added individually by you setting up a gmail account and then adding each student with their user name. eg annemirtschin@gmail.com+smi0002
We have found blogging to have such powerful learning outcomes and we are using it more and more, encouraging students to develop them as digital portfolios. Grades 4 to 10 (10 year olds to 16 year olds) all have them. They are all linked from my blog if you scroll down the right hand side and choose the appropriate year level. Or a grade 6 girl example is http://skippy.globalstudent.org.au

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Permalink Reply by Amy Cobb on July 25, 2008 at 3:44pm

Hi Michelle,
I use Blogger. It's free, super easy to use, and you can embed pictures, video, Voicethread in a snap. You do not need individual student accounts. I also disabled the nav bar at the top of the page. You can easily set permissions anyway you want for control. I have the posts come to my email first for approval before posting. I used Wordpress last year, which is great too, but somewhat restrictive on what you can embed, etc. Blogger is much more user friendly, I think. Let me know if you have any other questions.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle TeGrootenhuis on July 25, 2008 at 10:53pm

I'm working on a trial version of a classroom blog at Blogger. I see I can add up to 100 authors, BUT can multiple authors be adding to the blog simultaneously? Can I let my kiddos type posts in the computer lab at the same time?

Thanks so much for your comments and suggestions!
-Michelle TG

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Permalink Reply by Amy Cobb on July 30, 2008 at 7:05am

Hi Michelle. Good questions. I don't use Blogger that way so I'm not much help. I'm the only one who can post a blog and the kids respond through the comment link. I like the control this way, for the number of students I have, and the end result is still basically the same as far as their writing goes.

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