Theology 7372, Fall 2009

Did I say six weeks?

There’s another couple of tasks that’ll really help you so let’s make that

‘Each week for six eight weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging’.

This week’s task is to add your student blogs to a folder in Google Reader to make it easier to read their posts.

Why Make it Easier to Read Posts?

It’s important that you and your students are able to quickly read the latest posts from all student blogs because:

1. You need to encourage your students to be reading and learning off each others’ posts (and comments)
2. Learning as part of a community leads to greater knowledge gain and innovation than working independently of each other
3. It makes monitoring what’s written less time consuming and easier

How it’s done

Visiting each individual blog to check for new posts is time consuming.

The better way is to bring the latest posts to you using their RSS feed.

RSS (stands for “Really Simple Syndication) works by retrieving the latest content from blogs and sites you are interested in and bringing them to one location where you can easily read it.

Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

Please note - Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically include RSS feed and won’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the presence of the RSS feed.

Options to bring latest student posts to one location include:

1. Feed Readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines
2. Personalized homepages such as NetVibes, PageFlakes, ProtoPage,  iGoogle

Ultimately it’s personal preference whether you use a Personalized homepage or Google Reader.

With personalized homepages you can add a range of different widgets, besides RSS feeds from student blogs, to really customize the page with helpful content for your students.  However, reading posts on a personalized homepage isn’t as easily as reading them via a shared Google Reader folder.

How to Set Up Google Reader

1.  Create a Gmail account (if you don’t have one)

2.  Go to Google Reader and sign in with your Google Account

3.  Add your student blogs, one at a time, to your Google Reader account by:

• Clicking on Add A Subscription
• Entering their blog URL
• Now click Add

3. Next create a folder and place all the student blogs into the folder as follows:

• Click on Manage Subscription (at bottom of page)

• Click on Add to a Folder next to the name of any student blog to create a new folder for your student blogs
• Select New Folder

• Add the name of your folder and then click OK

• Now add all the student blogs to the folder you have created by selecting all the student blogs then clicking on the drop down menu next to More Actions to select the name of your new folder

4. Click Back to Google Reader

How To Read Posts Inside Google Reader

Latest posts from your student blogs will automatically be added to your Google Reader when they’re published and you read them as follows:

1.  Log into your Google Reader account

2.  Click on the name of the folder that contains your student blogs

3.  The number of unread posts is shown in bold next to the name of the folder.

4.   Now just scroll down through the posts in the folder to read their posts.

5.  As you scroll the posts will automatically be marked as read and the number of unread posts listed next to the folder will decrease.

6.  To visit a post to add a comment just click on the post’s title.

How To Share Your Google Folder With Students

The easiest option is to change your folder to public and then share the link to this Google Reader public page as follows:

1.  In your Google Reader account click on Manage Subscription (at bottom of page)

2.  Click on the Folders and Tags Tab

3.  Click on the icon next to private for your folder to change it to public

4.  Click on view public page to check out your public page.  For example, here’s my public page from this demo.

5.  Now share this public page with your students by adding it to your blog roll on your class blog as follows:

• In dashboard of your class blog go to Links > Add New

• Add a title for your Google Reader public page to the Name Module
• Add your Google Reader public page URL to the Web Address Module

• Select Blogroll in the Categories Module and click Add Link

Provided your Links widget is in your blog sidebar this link to your Google Reader public page will appear in your sidebar —and students just need to click on this link to read the latest posts.

For more how-to info on blog rolls read this post!

FINAL THOUGHTS

For those participating in the Student Blogging Challenge:

1. We need all teachers to set up a Google Reader shared folder (or a Personalized homepage) if your class is participating using individual student blogs as we will be linking to these pages from Challenge Yourself to Blog.
2. We recommend you add Challenge Yourself to Blog and The Edublogger to your Google Reader to make it easier to read the latest posts from the Challenge.

Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2:  Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
4. Week 4 – Add your student blogs to your blogroll
5. Week 5 – Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts
6. Week 6 – Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Each week for six weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

This week’s task is to help parents connect with your class blog.

Educating Parents and Students About Blogs

Blogs are a totally foreign concept to most students and parents.

It’s important to educate them so they appreciate the value of blogging, support the process  and understand expectations for interacting with the blogs.

Obviously one approach is to set up your blogging rules and guidelines like we did in the Week 2 task. 

However, it’s also a good idea to provide handouts to send home to families. No point having all the information online if they can’t even find the blog!

Examples of Handouts

Here’s two handouts used by Kathleen McGeady for her Grade 2 class blog:

1. Introduction to Blogging Handout explains:

• What is a blog?
• Provides the blog URL
• Online safety rules

2.  Guide to Getting the Most out of 2KM’s Class blog explains:

• How to be automatically notified of  new posts
• How categories are used to make it easier to find their child’s work
• How to leave comments
• How to be notified of new comments on posts
• How to search for content and reminder to check Pages for helpful information
• Connecting and sharing with other classrooms through their class blog

Creating Your Own Handouts

Use Kathleen’s handouts as a guide to the type of info and detail to include — and customise it for your situation and student ages.

A powerful component of her handouts is her use of screenshots.

Here’s a list of screen capture software you could use:

1. MWSnap – free (PC)
2. Jing -  free (PC and Mac)
3. Skitch – free (Mac)
4. SnagIT – US$49.95 (PC) – this is what I use for all my screenshots

Alternatively you could use PrtScrn and paste the image into MS Paint.

Sett Up Email Subscription

With younger students, such as kindergarten to Grade 3, an important aspect of  the class blog is sharing, with parents and family, what’s happening in the class and what the students are learning.

Email subscription makes it easier for parents and other readers to be automatically notified of new posts.

Email subscription is definitely a ‘must have’ widget on class blogs.

There are three main options for adding email subscription to your blog:

1. Feedburner email subscription – all blog users except private blogs
   • Here’s how to set up Feedburner RSS and Email subscription
2. Email Subscription Widget – Edublogs supporters only
3. Subscribe2 email subscription- Edublogs Campus only
   • Here’s how to set up and use Subscribe2

Email Subscription Widget

The email subscription widget (Edublogs supporters only) is the fastest and easiest way of adding email subscription to your blog.

It sends an email immediately when the post is published.  Readers click on the link in the email which takes them to the post on your blog.

Adding it is as simple as:

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

2.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

3.  Drag the Email Subscription Widget from the Available Widgets area into the Sidebar area on the right

• It’s a good idea to locate the email subscription near the top of the sidebar

4.  The widget will automatically open — just add your desired title to the widget\

5.  Presto!  A simple email subscription is now added to your blog sidebar

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen McGeady for sharing your handouts with us! Her blog Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom is definitely worth subscribing to!

Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2:  Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
4. Week 4 – Add your student blogs to your blogroll
5. Week 5 – Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Each week for six weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2:  Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
4. Week 4 – Add your student blogs to your blogroll

This week’s task is to add your students as users to your class blog so they can write posts on it.

Why Add Students As Users To Class Blogs?

Normally when a class blog is initially set up you’ll be responsible for writing posts, and the students respond by writing comments.

This gives you time to increase your skills while gradually introducing your students to blogging and educating them on appropriate online behaviour.

However, ultimately you’ll need to make decisions:

• Do you want students to write posts on the class blog?
• Do you want them to have their own student blog?

Factors you need to consider include student’s age, time and motivation.

As student’s age increases you are more likely to want them to write posts on the class blog or their own blog (i.e. as a general rule Kindergarten and Grade 1 students write comments only).

Ownership and Motivation

Ownership is an important part of blogging; as it’s an important part of life.

We all take better care of and have increased motivation when we feel personal ownership.

Students are no different from adults.

Ever tried to set up adults on a group blog?  Incredibly challenging — often one person does the bulk of the publishing!  Yet each individual happily posts on their own blog.

Time Involved

Increasing student’s blogging role increases the time spent providing guidance and monitoring their online activities.

However,  your students learn more, are more motivated and their writing improves faster.

Check out these posts by student bloggers to see for yourself:

1. Starting Out Blogging by Abbey (12 years old)
2. How Blogging Has Connected me to a Global Audience by Daniel (11 years old)
3. To Blog Or Not To Blog by Sam (11 years old)

PS You can create your own GraphJam here!

Introducing Blogging To Students

If you decide to increase your students’ blogging roles it’s a good idea to introduce it slowly in the following three steps:

Write comments on class blogs

Write posts on the class blog

Write posts on their own student blog

What Role Do You Assign Students on Blogs?

The five roles for users you can give students on class blogs or on their student blogs are: Administrator; Editor; Author; Contributor; and Subscriber.

Deciding which role to assign them is a balance between:

1. How much responsibility you’re comfortable with assigning your students
2. School and District guidelines
3. Providing them with an environment that’s motivating

If you want to approve all posts before they can be published then assign them the role of contributors.

For more info refer to Managing Students on Blogs…What Role Do You Assign Students?

Here is a summary of their differences based on User Capability:

Here is a summary of their differences based on access to features in the dashboard:

How To Add Students As Users To Class Blogs

There are three main ways to add users to Edublogs:

1. Users > Add New
2. Users > Add New Users – Edublogs supporters and Edublogs Campus only
3. Users > Add Users or Users > Add Existing Users – Edublogs Supporter and Edublogs Campus only

Here’s a summary of what each is used for:

Please note:

1. Add New Users is the fastest way to add students quickly to your class blog — if they don’t have a username.
2. Add Users (or Add Existing Users) is the fastest way to add students quickly to your class blog — if have a username.

Refer to Creating and Adding Users to blog for detailed instructions on how to use each.

Student accounts and email address

An email address is required when you create student accounts — it’s important for password resets, comment moderation etc

If your students don’t have email addresses the simplest solution is to set up their accounts using one Gmail account and then add a + sign and a different number and/or letter(s) to the end of your email name for each student.

How it works is Gmails ignores anything in the first half of an email address after a plus sign.

So if you create each email with the format username+studentname@gmail.com all emails will be sent to the inbox of username@gmail.com

Please Note:

• You must use a real gmail account– either use your own gmail account or set up a gmail account for your class e.g. room13@gmail.com.
• This also means that if you want to moderate comments on student posts they will be sent to your email address.

Organsing Student Posts on Class Blogs

Educators new to blogging often struggle with when you write Posts as opposed to Pages.

The best way to manage your student work is they write posts and assign their name as a category to the post before they publish their post.  This makes it easy to find and manage their work.

You display the categories assigned to posts in your blog sidebar using the categories widget (here is how to add widgets).

This means when you click on the name of a student in your sidebar it’ll loads a page with all posts that use that student name as a category — check this out in action on Mr.Toft.ca!

Watch Nathan Toft’s excellent video to see how he adds students to blogs and assigns them categories!

Here is more information on:

1. Differences between Posts and Pages
2. Adding Categories and Tags into your Posts

Before you get them writing posts just create a category for each student as follows:

1.  Go to Posts > Categories in your blog dashboard

2.  Add the first name of your student (if necessary include initial of last name)

3.  Click Add Category

Please note:

• Categories won’t display in your category widget until it has been assigned to a post.

About Category Parents

You use Category Parents if you want to sort your categories into groups.

For example, you might have Student as a parent category and then all Student names underneath.  Then you might have another parent category for subjects and have all the subject names underneath.

Here’s how you organise categories using Parent Categories:

1.  Go to Posts > Categories in your blog dashboard

2.  Add the name of the Parent Category e.g. Students

3.  Click Add Category

4.  Now add a new category for your student by adding the first name of your student

5.  Select the desired Category Parent (e.g. Student) from the drop down menu and click Add Category.

Adding a category to a Post

Now when your students write their post it’s as simple as:

1. Write their post
2. Select their name as a category
3. Click Publish post or Submit for Review

FINAL THOUGHTS

These weekly tasks are part of the preparation for the next Student Blogging Challenge which starts in March.

You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

You can now register your class for the Student Blogging Challenge.  Here is what you need to do!

Go to Time for teachers to register their classes and complete the following steps:

• Step 1: Join our mailing list by adding your email address
• Step 2: Complete the Google Form to register your class
• Step 3: Check Your Class is displayed on the Student Challenge List

Students will be able to register next week!

Please a comment on this post if you need help setting up your class blog just — I’m always happy to help!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Each week for six weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2: Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar

This week’s task is to add your student blogs to your blogroll (if you have student blogs).

Alternatively you can follow these directions to add links to helpful websites.

What is a Blogroll?

A blogroll is a list of links that you display on your blog.

Bloggers commonly use blogrolls to list their favourite blogs.  Blogrolls help readers locate other blogs worth reading — you are saying “these are some blogs I like – which are worth checking out!”

Blogrolls on class blogs are used slightly differently.

Your class blog is the central hub that connects your student blogs together; making it easier to share their learning, interact with each other and a global audience.

The blogroll on your class blog is what links together all the blogs — helping you, your students and others locate the student blogs easily.

Here’s an example of a blogroll on a Huzzah’s class blog:

How to Add Links To Your Blogroll

Every newly created Edublog has the same default widgets in its sidebars — including a blogroll.

You add links to your student blogs as follows:

1.  Go to Links > Add New

2.  Add the first name of your student (and initial of last name if necessary) to the Name Module

Tips:

• Normally only first names of students are used online.
• This is the text that will be clickable and takes you to their blog

3.  Add the student’s blog URL to the Web Address Module

4.  Select Blogroll in the Categories Module and click Add Link

How To Use Link Categories To Organise Your Student Blogs

You can sort students from different classess into separate categories as follows:

1.  Click on Add A New Category in the Categories Module

2.  Add the Class name then click Add

3.  Now instead of selecting blogroll you just choose the correct category for their Class and click Add Link

Check out Huzzah to see how categories can be used to sort links in blogrolls:

• Student blogs are listed using the catgeory Class Blogs
• Class blogs they read are listed using the category Our Blogroll

How To Edit Links

After adding links, you may want to edit them or delete the default links included on the blogroll of newly created Edublog.

1.  Go to Links > Edit

2.   To delete a link, hover over the link name and click the Delete option that appears below it.

3.  To delete multiple links, select several links and then choose Delete from the drop down Bulk Action menu, and click Apply.

4.  To edit a link, hover over the link name and click the Edit option that appears below it.

5.  An edit screen will open — just edit the link details and then click Update Link

Adding your Blogroll to Your Blog Sidebar

The Links Widget  is used to display the links you added to your blogroll in your sidebar.

Every newly created Edublog has the same default widgets in its sidebars — including a blogroll.  However,  when you add any widget to a newly created blog (via Appearance > Widgets) it automatically removes the default Edublogs widgets.

You add your blogroll back into the sidebar as follows:

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard

2.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

3.  Drag the Links Widget from the Available Widgets area into the Sidebar area on the right

FINAL THOUGHTS

These weekly tasks are part of the preparation for the next Student Blogging Challenge which starts in March.

You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Please a comment on this post if you need help setting up your class blog just — I’m always happy to help!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Each week for six weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

Here’s the previous tasks:

1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
2. Week 2: Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines

This week’s task is to add a visitor tracking tool to your blog sidebar.

Why Use Visitor Tracking Widgets?

It’s likely that your blog gets visitors from around the world.

But unless you find ways of displaying visitor numbers and their geographical locations, your students won’t appreciate that they’re publishing posts for a global audience.

Benefits include:

• Knowing you’re writing for a global audience is incredibly motivating for students.
• Realizing people from other countries are reading what they’ve written increases their interest, excitement and motives them to blog.
• It also provides built-in geography lessons — as most students constantly check for new visitors and enjoy finding out more about the countries where their visitors are from.

There’s numerous different types of visitor tracking widgets you can use, and it isn’t uncommon for teachers and students to use more than one type on their blogs.

Below are the most commonly used ones with instructions on how to install.

ClustrMaps

ClustrMaps is a thumbnail hit counter map widget that shows the geographical location of all visitors to your blog. Number of visitors from a location is indicated by the relative size of the dot.

Clicking the ClustrMaps thumbnail takes you to a large World map so you can examine your traffic sources more closely.

There is a ClustrMaps widget in the left hand side bar of this blog.

Here’s comprehensive ‘how to’ add a ClustrMaps to Your Sidebar Using:

1. A Text Widget – free Edublogs blogs
2. The ClustrMaps widget – Edublogs supporter blogs only

Flag Counter

Flag Counter widget shows the total number of visitors from each country next to the country’s flag. Every time someone from a new country visits your site, a new flag will be added to your counter.

Clicking on the flag counter takes you to your Flag counter page which provides more detailed charts and information about your visitors.

See it in action on Technology in Our Classroom!

Here’s how to add a Flag Counter:

1.  Go to Flag Counter

2.  Choose the maximum flags to show, number of columns of flags and your color scheme then click Get Your Flag Counter

Please Note: most blog sidebars will only fit 1 or 2 columns of flags.

3.  Copy the HTML embed code

4.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

5.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

Please note: In new blogs sidebars in your dashboard are empty and adding widgets automatically removes the default Edublogs widgets

5.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right.

6.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code from Flag Counter, click Save and then Close.

7.  You should now see your Flag Counters in your blog sidebar and the flags will start appearing after 24 hours.

Feedjit Live Traffic

Feedjit Live Traffic Feed displays visitors to your blog in real time and includes:

• Which city and country your visitors are in
• Which website they arrived from, if any
• Which page they visited on your website
• Which external link they clicked to leave your site, if any

Your traffic feed is updated as each visitor arrives on your site. This update occurs before it loads so each of your visitors can see their own location displayed.

Clicking on the Feedjit Live Traffic counter takes you to your Live traffic page which provides more detailed information including the countries associated with web visitors’ IP addresses, the web browser, computer operating system, and referring website.

See it in action on Technology in Our Classroom!

Here’s how to add a Feedjit Live Traffic Widget:

1.  Go to Feedjit Live Traffic Feed

2.  Click on Click here to Customize It! below Live Traffic Feed

3.  Choose your color scheme and width (ideal size for most sidebars is less than 170)

4.  Once finished customizing, copy the HTML embed code

5.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

6.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

7.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

8.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code from Live Traffic Feed, click Save and then Close.

9.  You should now see your Live Traffic Feed in your blog sidebar and visitor data will immediately start appearing.

Feedjit Live Traffic Map

Feedjit Live Traffic Map displays real-time visitor tracking by showing the geographic locations of the last 100 visitors to your blog.

If you move your mouse over any point on the map the city and country for that visitor will be displayed.

Clicking on the Feedjit Live Traffic Map takes you to your Live Traffic Map page which provides more detailed information.

See it in action on Technology in Our Classroom!

Here’s how to add a Feedjit Live Traffic Widget:

1.  Go to Feedjit Live Traffic Map

2.  Click on Click here to Customize It! below Live Traffic Map

3.  Choose your color scheme and width (ideal size for most sidebars is less than 170)

4.  Once finished customizing, copy the HTML embed code

5.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

6.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

7.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

8.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code from Live Traffic Map, click Save and then Close.

9.  You should now see your Live Traffic Map in your blog sidebar and visitor data will immediately start appearing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

These weekly tasks are part of the preparation for the next Student Blogging Challenge which starts in March.  You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Please a comment on this post:

1. If you have any problems or questions while setting up your class blog just — I’m always happy to help!
2. If you have advice for other educators on visitor tracking widgets — would love to hear stories of how you use them with your students!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

Each week for the next six weeks we’re giving you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

This week’s task is to set up blogging rules and guidelines on your class blog.

Why Have Blogging Rules and Guidelines?

An important part of using an online tool with your students is educating them on appropriate online behavior.  Just because your students grew up with technology doesn’t mean they appreciate or understand what is/isn’t appropriate to post online.

Your class blog provides an excellent opportunity to educate students, parents and other readers on proper online behavior such as:

1. Types of identifying information that is appropriate in posts and/or comments e.g., What are your rules about use of last names, IM, images and personal information?
2. What should/shouldn’t you write in posts and/or comments?

Deciding On Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines

This is the type of task where you could decide on the rules and guidelines yourself or do as a whole of class activity (where you actively involve your students in the entire process).

Here are examples of different ways they are used on class blogs to help you with the task:

• 2KM @ Leopold Primary School! Our Blog Guidelines and General blogging information (Grade 2)
• Math Error Class Blogging Guidelines
• Mr. Salsich’s Class Blog Guidelines (Grade 3)
• Mr Mundorf’s Class Online Safety (Grade 5)
• Huzzah’s Commenting Guidelines (Grade 5/6)
• Endless Questions Responsible Blogging (Grade 6-8 )
• Mr. Pfluger’s Discussion Corner Blog Guidelines (Grade 6)
• Our Space Student blogging Guidelines (Year 6)
• Mr. M’s History Blog Posting Comments (Grade 8 )
• Mr Jorgensen’s Blogging Guidelines (Grade 8 )
• Mr B’s Box Parent Information about our blogs
• Scattergood Biology How To Post and Comment
• Publishing Corner Guidelines and Rules (12-15 year olds)
• Biology in Action Blogging Guidelines (High School and College)

The Two Page Blog Guide For Parents by Kathleen McGeady is an excellent idea for a parent resource.

If you want to include Online Safety activities as part of the process then, Larry Ferlazzo’s The Best Sites For Learning Online Safety post is a good starting place to identify suitable resources.

Setting Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines

Once you’ve decided what you want to include in your rules and guidelines it is now just a case of publishing them on your blog.

You would normally publish them on a Page rather than in a post because pages are ideal for important information like this that you don’t expect to update frequently. However, if you also wanted to discuss your rules with your students and readers you might write a post like Miss W. has done.

Here’s information to help you with working with pages:

1. Differences between Posts and Pages
2. Writing Pages
3. Most class blogs use blog themes that have navigational links to Pages at the top of the theme e.g., Mr. Salsich’s blog. Links at the top of the theme make it easier to navigate pages.
4. Updated: 100 Edublogs Themes Review To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier
5. Edublogs Themes That Allow Comments on Pages!
6. Taking The Agony Out Of Using Custom Image Headers
7. Use the Pages widget for blog themes that don’t include navigational links — here is how you change your sidebar widgets!

FINAL THOUGHTS

These weekly tasks are part of the preparation for the next Student Blogging Challenge which starts in March.  You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Please a comment on this post:

1. If you have any problems or questions while setting up your class blog just — I’m always happy to help!
2. If you have advice for other educators on setting up their blogging rules and guidelines or have resources we should check out!

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free!

The next Student Blogging Challenge starts in March and this time we’ve decided there are tasks that need to be done BEFORE your class actually takes part in the challenge.

So each week for the next six weeks we will give you a new task, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

This week’s task is to create a class blog.

Why Have A Class Blog

A class blog is always a good starting point if you want to blog with your students.

It gives you to time to increase your skills while gradually introducing your students to blogging and educating them on appropriate online behaviour.

Start initially with you being responsible for writing posts, and the students responding in comments. As students demonstrate both keenness and responsibility give them their ‘blogging license’ where they earn the right to write posts on the class blog and/or get their own student blog.

Ultimately even if each student has their own blog it is always a good idea to have a class blog.

Blogging isn’t just about writing posts; it’s about sharing your learning and reflecting on what you have learnt.

Important parts of the blogging process include encouraging students to:

1. Read each others posts
2. Interact and comment on each others posts  by challenging each others thoughts and views
3. Write posts in response to each others posts

The class blog is the central hub that connects your student blogs together; making it easier to share their learning, interact with each other and a global audience.

Aspects To Consider Before Creating Your Class Blog

Username and Display Name

Your username is what you use to sign into your blog dashboard and is displayed on posts and comments you write. While you can’t change your username, most blog platforms do allow you to change how your name is displayed.

In most cases it’s better to choose a username that makes it easier for others to relate to you as a real person. For example, compare spwat3 with suewaters — which is easier to relate to?

On a class blog you need to consider what is an appropriate username for you to use.  Most don’t allow students to use first and last name online so some prefer to model this by using names like Miss W or  Mrs Waters.

Blog URL

Think carefully about your blog URL.

Once your blog has an established audience you’re less likely to want to change your blog URL and educators often use the same blog for the next year’s class.

Ideally you want to keep your blog URL short, easy to remember and suitable to be reused for several years.

A simple option is to use your name in the blog URL as these educators did:

1. Ms Cahusac (http://mscahusac.edublogs.org/)
2. Mrs Burton (http://msvrburton.edublogs.org) have done.

Alternatively use something unique that has meaning like Jan Smith (http://huzzah.edublogs.org).

Blog Title

Think about the name of your blog.

Choose a name that reflects the purpose of your class blog and your students can relate to.

For example, Mrs Burton’s blog title Blog, blog blog blog, blog some more is very clever.  Check out our class blog list for titles that other educators have used!

Check Out Class Blogs

Coming up with ideas on how you might use your blog with students can be hard to visualize.

Make time to check out how other educators use their class blogs to get ideas on “what works”/”doesn’t work”.

Here are some blogs for you to look at:

1. Network Nine (Year 4)
2. MrToft.ca (Grade 5)
3. Grade 5e (Grade 5)
4. Huzzah (Grade 6/7)
5. Blog, blog blog blog, blog some more (English I)
6. Endless Questions (Grade 6-8 languages)
7. Or check out our class blog list (over 200 class blogs separated into grade and subject area)

Creating Your Class Blog

Now you’ve done all the research it’s time to set up your class blog.

Here are the instructions to follow if you would like to set up your class blog on Edublogs:

1. Signing up for your blog
2. Logging into your blog dashboard
3. Using your blog dashboard
4. Changing Your Blog’s Look
5. Writing your First Post

You will find all Getting Started With Edublogs information here!

FINAL THOUGHTS

You can read more about the Student blogging challenge here:

1. About the student challenge
2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

If you have any problems or questions while setting up your class blog just leave a comment on this post — I’m always happy to help!

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