21 Classes blog

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Permalink Reply by Alice Mercer on August 15, 2007 at 9:12am

I didn't like the graphic choices. It was pretty vanilla looking. Also, if not paid, some of the ads were for term paper services (places to buy term papers online and turn in as your own). They may have more graphics, and may have dumped the term paper ads (although it was Google ad-sense, so...).
I'm preferring having a class blog (1 blog per grade level where students comment rather than post) so far for next year, but since I'm teaching the entire school computers and technology, I would be managing a lot of student blogs if I went that route.

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on August 16, 2007 at 3:57pm

I just received a twitter message from Konrad Glogowski who said the student pages can be customized - but he paid for the service to remove the ads. Read his post here: http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2007/07/19/21classes-and-personali...

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on August 18, 2007 at 2:43pm

I received mail from 21 classes saying that they are stopping ads on all class blogs for no fee!

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Permalink Reply by gordon brune on August 18, 2007 at 7:23pm

I have spent a lot of my time recently trying to explore edublogs and 21 classes. I have used BlogMeister for the last 4 years and would highly recommend it. But, honestly, the lack of an "add an image" and "add hyperlink" buttons in the editing mode is making me want to move elsewhere. A lot of my students link to news articles they react to and with BlogMeister they have to simply copy\paste the url which works but isn't too clean looking. (Yeah, I know, I could show them the html.) They also want to add images saved on our Flickr account which is a bit cumbersome without an "add an image" button prompting them for the url of the image.

This summer I finally cracked the nut on how to set up a "student centered" learnerblog\edublog. I set one up with a group of "students" as contributors for a teacher inservice this summer. (Directions on how I did that here.) I was really pleased with the potential. But when everyone tried to access it in our school lab we got hung up. As good as I envision things to be with edublogs\learnerblogs, if things will not work with a whole class hitting it at the same time in a lab then I'm not using it! (I've never have had this problem with BlogMeister or other sites we occasionally use as a whole class.)

Lately I have been engrossed with 21 classes and have liked what I see. But I have emailed "support" for 3 different questions and have gotten no responses. Not sure if I want to get myself wedded to that. . . .

So, I'm back to BlogMeister. Not such a bad thing, really. It offers great support with a user supported wiki and Yahoo group and David Warlick's active presence. I also like the "vanilla" interface and the fact that it does not offer a lot of customization. Adding Flick images spices it up enough for me and, frankly, I would rather kids get attention for their postings than with their theme choice. But, most importantly, I KNOW how it works and I KNOW that it works in the school. Knowing something works and won't crash and burn (for the most part) trumps everything else.

Do wish David could find the time to add those "add an image" and "add hyperlink" buttons, though!

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on October 2, 2007 at 12:26am

Well, I have been blogging with 2 different classes this semester and would like to give an update of how it’s going so far. I chose to use http://www.21classes.com with my Graphic Design and Digital Video Production classes. I chose to blog with these students because they are considered “advanced” project classes and incorporating reflective writing along with the projects will give me insights into the students thinking of why they designed projects the way they did. Plus the blogs give an authentic audience for the student’s work and opportunities for comments create interaction among the students.

First of all, the Graphic Design students immediately taught each other how to customize their blogs with colors, backgrounds, embedded images, and tweaking CSS code (see samples). I only pointed the way and soon I noticed kids helping kids and lots of learning happening without any of my help - thank you MySpace!

The Digital Video students enjoyed embedding their first video project into their blog. I have also assigned them to look for examples of interesting video clips, editing techniques and add them to their blog for assignments. Almost all written work for both classes is placed on the blogs. I am requiring (for now) student to comment on other’s post to encourage communication - but most of the kids do it without specific direction.

21classes keeps our student’s blogs private and also has a community portal so students can easily access each other’s blogs plus it gives me a place to post assignments for both classes. Students from Graphic Design and Digital Video classes can see each other’s blogs and this has increased interest in what the other class is doing.

So far I am please with the overall layout, user interface and ease of use of 21 classes. We are already maxing out our free space so I will be upgrading to the paid subscription ($8.95 per month) but this gives each student 25 mb of space which will be needed by the Graphic Design students since we are posting graphic samples and student projects on the blogs.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Dawson on October 2, 2007 at 1:06am

Hello Collette

It's Alan again. What you are describing sounds great. I cant help but pick up from this that what is happening is that you are catching up with what is normal and day to day for most of your students. You will know this already I have no doubt. What is good is that even if this is the case your students are finding this way of working is enhancing their learning which is just fabulous for them.

But let's not forget that it may be normal for them and it will become increasingly so for you, but you are light years ahead of the majority of your fellow colleagues across the world. Well done you for taking these steps. More power to you and all that you are doing.

Alan

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