Today began my blogging experiment with my students. I thought this through carefully to try and make it as smooth as possible, especially considering I am dealing with sixth graders. Here is how it went…

1. Most of my sixth graders do not have email addresses. If they do, they don’t understand the syntax of an email address to remember it correctly. I got a lot of www.myemail@hotmail.com type entries. So to combat this, I enlisted in Hosted Gmail‘s then-Beta test and they gave me 2500 email addresses at christophercraft.com. Email problem solved.

2. So today, I had kids working in groups on a podcast radio commercial they will record and we’ll publish down the line. Then I individually called kids up and gave them email addresses that match the login they use here at school. When they enroll here they are given a permanent number, the last six of which are their login. So now I have nearly 100 emails at christophercraft.com that read like this… 123456@christophercraft.com. No personally identifiable information whatsoever. COPPA happy.

3. Then I sent them to my Spanish website to register there using the brand new email address. Most made it through with no problem, since it was so easy.

4. I then sent them to the Drupal site to register there. More confusion than I was expecting, but they muddled through.

5. The hang ups were typically handled by other group members, especially if I enlisted help from someone who had successfully navigated the process.

So so far, so good. They are all registered on three websites with the same information that they theoretically cannot forget since it isn’t arbitary like a username. This is info I can pull up if they have trouble.

I have to be honest, this was exhausting. I have to do this again tomorrow for my second day of kids. I am beginning to wonder how worth it this is. I say that because I get new kids every nine weeks!! That means another day of this in a litlte over a month and a half.

Four times a year? This would be a no-brainer if my kids stayed with me for the entire year, but that’s not the way it works with my subjects (Spanish and Latin).

I have been surprised at the number of kids that don’t know what a blog is. I tell them it’s like a diary that you publish. Bad explanation since you typically put personal information in a diary.

I don’t mind training them, but they only have me a few more times. Literally I think they come back to me 19 more times total.

Sometimes trying to be revolutionary is draining on the energy levels. I hope this thrives. That would make it worth it.

The day they realize they don’t have to be consumers of the Internet, but rather that they can be contributors will be the day I chock this up as a success.

UPDATE: Fixed a link or two.