Trails Optional

This year I’ve been blogging with my Grade 5 (age 10-11) students.  We have a class blog where we share collective thoughts, links, activities, and general information.  Each student has an individual blog where they can post updates of things they are learning, responses to videos, lessons, other class activities, or their own thoughts and ideas.  Sometimes I set a prescribed topic, sometimes I give a structure, sometimes I leave it open.

The power in blogging comes from connecting.  This is something I’ve started to do better and better with.  I have students leave comments on other class and student blogs, as well as have people leave comments for my students.  I use my twitter PLN and the #comments4kids twitter hashtag to facilitate this process.  I am able to spread the student’s ideas and posts out to over 800 educators for them to be able to see.  This way my students blogs are exposed to outsiders, but in a controlled manner, to an educational audience.

To set up the student blogs I used the platform edublogs.  I have one pro account for my main class blog that provides more space and enables me to remove ads from up to 50 student blogs.  This way there are no advertisements and it is a very reasonable fee ($39.95 US) for the hosting of my class blog.  When you take the adds off of student accounts you also enable embedding and increase the number of available themes.  The student blogs become free+ blogs and the main class blog is a pro account.  With the pro account you can mass create student blogs, and add multiple users if you want students to be able to create and add content to the class blog.

When I created my student blogs I wanted them to all run through one email address.  The students’ school email addresses all had their first and last names as user names.  I feel it is unsafe to use these email addresses on the internet as the students are quite young.  I assigned each student a number and the school name acronym DDS (1dds, 2dds, etc)  Then I used the gmail + method described in the hyperlink.  In short you can use multiple user names to create  blogs (each needs a separate email address) but still have all of them come to one email account.  This way all of the comments my students receive come through my email before the kids see them.  This way I can catch any potential problems.  I haven’t had a single questionable comment or issue yet, but it is still good that I see them first.  This way I can also alert students that they have a comment so that they can respond.

I set the students user names and passwords so they wouldn’t be forgotten and so that they were secure.  It meant I had to go into the dashboard of each student, but I wanted to make sure that everything was set up properly and safely.  The user names with number and acronym (21dds) became the blog URLs: http://21dds.edublogs.org I made sure when setting up the blogs that I choose that the blogs are not listed on search engines.  This way the only people that run across the blogs are those that I choose to share the links with.  I like the ideas of the blogs being open, but controlled.  This way the students are using real site, with a real audience, posting real content.  They are engaged, excited, and want to show the world what they can do.  I’ve never had students so excited about writing, posting Math videos, and just sharing their ideas.  The students are learning, but they are in a safe, controlled, monitored platform, without overbearing restrictions.

I have two students that can use the internet, but cannot post on the internet at the request of their families.  Those student still have a blog and write, they just never hit publish, their work stays in draft form.  I can log in and leave comments, but there are no other outside views and I don’t link to them on the class blog.

My students post, they comment classmate’s posts, they comment on outside blogs, and they respond to comments.  This gives them a well rounded blogging experience.  They know they have an audience, they know people are reading and listening, and they rise to the challenge.  They are more thoughtful, more aware, and strive to create better content.  They are very aware of being safe.  We have talked extensively about safe choices.  They don’t give the name of the school or community.  They don’t use last names and they don’t link to any site they haven’t asked me about first.  They don’t use photos that show faces and they don’t refer to personal details, specific family members, or other people.

Below is one of my favourite examples of a great student blog.  Tyson has really captured a blogging voice and audience.  His cluster map shows he his global visitors, and he gets several comments a week on his posts.  His family members, students from other schools, and educators I have connected with have all left comments.

The comments my students have received have been fabulous.  They have had comments from all over the world, from their own parents, and from other students.  A class in Michigan all left comments about our Math Podcast.

A few very wonderful teachers have gone in and left comments for all of my students.  The time and caring of these educators to leave comments and feedback for my students has made the process stronger and more meaningful for myself and my children.

Try blogging with your class, it has been fantastic.  The first few posts were a bit painful and it took time to build good posting and commenting skills, but in just one year the improvement has been drastic.

These two posts are from the same student.  She is a student that struggles and has special needs.  She often has parallel assignments at a grade 3 level instead of a grade 5 level.  They are not perfect, but the growth is remarkable.  Her interest and enthusiasm for blogging means she is engaged, writing, and doing her absolute best.

This is another student post, and it isn’t even the entire post.  She was very excited about a science video conference we had.  She included a picture, and described in detail the experiments and her learning.  The picture is stretched and there are errors, but this is a 10 year old student excited about learning, sharing, and writing.

Blog with your students, you won’t be sorry!