Blogs for Kids - no email accounts

Hi Everyone - This is my first post! I'm looking for a simple classroom blog application that does not require that students have email accounts. We use PB Wiki as a pseudo blog but it does not allow for threaded discussions.. Does anyone know of one that is easy to set up and not confusing for elementary students! Thanks!

Tags: blog, elementary, email

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on February 26, 2009 at 5:49pm

Wow - I'm impressed!

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 26, 2009 at 5:56pm

Thanks, It's actually one of the 'tidiest' student blogs I've seen. It's made with Drupal, the dad of a former student designed it,and offered to serve it, Hosting is not that big of a deal, it's cheap but designing it in the first place was priceless.

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on February 26, 2009 at 5:58pm

I've heard of this actually.. someone demonstrated it to a Collaborative I belong to.. Sounds wonderful.. but we are short staffed and don't have time to design sites and pages! I wish we had more time and resources!!

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 26, 2009 at 6:03pm

See if you can find a parent or community member to do it. Every thing tech wise takes tons of time, here's the other stuff we've done over the last few years. I looked around classchatterlive and it looks like a simple option without ads. For $30.00 you could set one up for 5 students and see how it works.

Permalink Reply by Daniel DeLuca on February 28, 2009 at 6:22pm

---- Full Disclosure: I am the owner and chief developer of ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive -----

Hello All, This is a great discussion I would like add my two cents on some of the differences between a custom system for educators like ClassChatterLive and an open source blogging platform like Dupral or WordPress.

In terms of pure blogging it is hard to top WordPress, it is basically what you think of when you think "blog." Dupral is similar but has more options in terms of Content Management. (basically you can make web pages as well as blogs)

A system like ClassChatterLive however, provides you with much more then a place to blog. However, this is not really the place to advertise features. The advantage a custom system like ClassChatterLive or 21Classes (hate to mention a competitor but I am trying to be fair) is the student management options. I can not speak for 21Classes, but in ClassChatter or ClassChatterLive you could easily create an account and have a class blogging in 20 minutes. I used to manage well over 100 student blogs at a time, and I was a relitivly light user compared to some of my more enthusiastic customers. In comparison the student management features of WordPress or Dupral are simple at best.

In short its about finding the right tool for you and your needs, but blogging with your kids does not have to be a huge time drain or technical challenge.

Dan

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on February 28, 2009 at 7:33pm

Dan, I couldn't agree with you more.. My job is to support the teachers in my district with technology integration. It has to be easy and do the job.. nothing more, nothing less.. I do want to compare ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive with a couple of my teachers.. I'll keep you posted!
Donna

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Permalink Reply by Mandy on March 1, 2009 at 3:31pm

I have been blogging with my second graders for about four months now using Class Blogmeister, and we find it easy to use. You can visit the site at www.classblogmeister.com What I like most about it is that there is a central class blog, and each student has an individual blog linked to it. You can check out our class blog here.

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on March 1, 2009 at 3:54pm

Mandy - I am very impressed with your blog, especially with 2nd graders! I'll be sure to check out blogmeister!
Thanks,
Donna

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on March 2, 2009 at 12:09pm

Thanks Tommi! Let me know how it goes for you..

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Sheppard on March 28, 2009 at 8:06am

Hi Donna,
I use classblogmeister.com There is a whole community of educators that use it. They also have a ning to help with any troubles and for collaboration.

Classblogmeister allows you to create classes and each student in a class has their own blog, along with the main blog list you create. Also, every comment, post, picture, change, etc., that is done on the blog has to go through you before it is posted. You can also make any additions or revisions as needed before you allow it to be posted.

You can check out my class's blog if you want to see how it looks. We are just kindergartners, so it's not the most in-depth, but we like it!
www.tinyurl.com/shepblog
Hope that helps!
Amanda

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Permalink Reply by Donna Criswell on March 28, 2009 at 8:45am

How adorable! thanks so much! I'm wondering how you deal with the Voki app. We took ours down because the students noticed the link to the actual voki site and started creating them at home on their own.. We had to remove it because the Voki site has some inappropriate content and we felt by using it on our own sites we were approving the site by association.. We are talking about 4th and 5th graders, not kindergarden children..