Has anyone in the states successfully convinced their admins to allow blogging?

I am up against "that" wall. I have provided the facts on blogging and the benefits. I have gone over the security measures involved(no material gets published without my OK, confidentiality, etc...), the cost(free). But still my admin says "NO, It opens us up to too many liabilities and lawsuit possibilities". Are there solutions, arguments, flyers, propaganda,? HELP!

Tags: blogging

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Permalink Reply by Ryan on November 12, 2007 at 6:25pm

YES! Class blogmeister is a good one and Edublogs isnt too bad either. Blogger and WordPress blogs are blocked:(

Ryan
http://theconservativeeducator.blogspot.com

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Permalink Reply by Scott on December 16, 2008 at 12:57pm

I am curious what your research has found specifically on the benefits of blogging. I have just begun to research the real benefits and begin my argument in favor of blogging, social networking, wikis and so on. Any help would be really great.

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Permalink Reply by meL on December 17, 2008 at 11:44am

There was an article in eSchoolNews (April 30) entitled "Blogging helps encourage teen writing". In the article they quote a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project with support from the College Board and the National Commission on Writing. The general finding was teen bloggers write more frequently both online and offline.
Many educational technology publications have articles on the uses and benefits of student blogging (Learning and Leading with Technology May 2008 and June/July 2008; Edutopia December 2008 - I know there are more, I just am unable to look them all up right now)

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Permalink Reply by Mark Fuson on December 17, 2008 at 8:26am

Our administration just approved the use of blogs for a creative writing class at our school. This is a small-scale implementation with an eye towards whether we will allow this for all subjects. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

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Permalink Reply by Amy on December 17, 2008 at 2:06pm

You might look into Moodle. It is a free tool that was really designed for entire online classrooms, but it has a blog/forum feature. You can at least host blogging for just students without the fear of outsiders. Also, lots of the free website builders (try weebly.com)have a feature that allows you to password protect your blogs. This might fly better with your district admin. We use weebly. If you wanted to blog with "outsiders" maybe you could find another school to buddy up with and have blogging discussions with. I could find someone in my district. Then you would just share the password between the two schools. As a district admin I think this would be easier to handle.

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Permalink Reply by Eve Heaton on December 18, 2008 at 4:13am

I know your post is older but I wanted to comment since I am going though/have gone through this recently (as in two weeks ago). I was interested in starting a class blog after I saw a group of South Carolina students blogging about a composting project they had going on (October of this year). I hadn't actually been involved with blogging (personally or otherwise) so I was truly starting from scratch. I asked our technology coach about having students blog and she wasn't supportive (we are talking fourth grade elementary school students). I decided to pursue the issue and presented the idea to the principal who asked me to put together a bunch of material to forward on to the district person in charge of those decisions (he was highly supportive). As a result, I had a meeting with the principal, IT coach, and district officals about my request. The district IT Director was very supportive. I had to assure everyone about the safety protocols and detail how I was going to use the technology to enhance instruction and keep it standards based. My love is science so it helped that I was showing how I was going to integrate across the curriculum. To the best of my knowledge there is no other teacher blogging with students at the moment in my district. The IT Director asked me to keep notes of my experiences this year and present at our summer institute (that request has really forced me to utilize blogging on a more frequent basis and look at my lesson planning each week to see where blogging can be fit in).

I am using blogger.com because it is easy to learn and set up. I am starting to look at other blogs that are more educationally based and connects you to other classrooms (epals.com is one). Although I met a teacher here on 2.0 who has served as a mentor for me setting up my blog (he blogs in Colorado with another fourth grade class) and we are trying to get our students interacting using WizIQ (he is the expert there...not me) and possibly Skype.

My selling points were:

- Creates another platform for students to write
- Teaches internet safety in a "real" situation
- Teaches students internet etiquette
- Encourages parent/family feedback on work

I am really pleased so far at how the students are taking to it and how much they are learning. I've attached all the documents I gave my principal. The IT Director did not want the internet rules going home for parent signature, which was my original idea. He said our AUP covers students working on the computer. I just sent home the letter. I made the students review and sign the internet safety rules. The letter is a combination of things I found on the internet.

Hope this post helps someone!

Eve

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