It’s been a whirlwind couple of days. I drove a few hours to Myrtle Beach, SC for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators conference. I did a presentation about blogging.
I don’t think I am going to present about blogging any more.
There is so much to talk about, and such a wide variety of experience levels walking in the door. You have to discuss everything from which platform to use, whether to allow comments, the legalities, the all-famous AUP, whether to allow comments and what to do if a student cyberbullies from home on your blog, etc etc etc
I am just not sure blogging with students is an all together good idea any more. I have a post in draft that’s been there since the last time I presented on blogging in March, let’s see what it says…
Drafted on March 16, 2007…I have added to it so just know it began then and continues now…
For the last two days I have been presenting on a variety of topics at the SC ETV headquarters for a teacher technology workshop. I presented on blogging, podcasting and wikis. My podcasting session and my wiki sessions were great!
My blogging session was awful.
My fault? Not sure.
Most of the teachers came in interested in having students publish work to the web in the interest of sparking conversation, not as a daily journal. So yes, Jeff, I get it. I understand blogs.
My issue with this whole deal is the lack of an appropriate online tool. Here’s what I mean, and remember, we’re talking STRICTLY about student blogging, not teacher blogging, not admin blogging, nothing else outside of students with a blog as an outlet for writing and conversation.
There are a few ways to pragmatically “do” this blogging thing. I am looking for a broadly implementable idea that can be administered by a teacher who is not super tech-savvy.
1. Blogger. I rule blogger out based on the need for kids to have an email address to sign up. I had a few teachers in my session concerned about that. The next blog button is also notoriously inappropriate.
2. WordPress – Good platform, and clearly my platform of choice. Not too many teachers have any clue how to install something on a shared server, nor do they have shared server space to begin with.
3. WordPress mu – Same issues as WordPress, except now the teacher has to administer the blogs. Not a bad thing in certain situations, but most classroom teachers do not have the time/expertise/desire to do this.
4. DrupalEd – Good platform and good organization. Same issues of teachers not having sufficient time/knowhow and shared server space.
5. Moodle – probably the best, since it can create a walled garden (which I support only in the context of our increasingly litigious society and frightened administrations) and yet some blog posts can be set to allow the world to read them. Naturally, with such flexibility comes an incredible amount of administrative headaches, not to mention the installation would knock any non tech-savvy teacher out of the running.
But Chris, what about some of the newer web-based tools? Ok, here you go…
6. Class Blogmeister – by far the teacher favorite with the teachers I’ve spoken with. I have heard it’s not being developed any more, and I emailed to try and get a login and never heard back. This is one that could use a team to come along and push development. The design is right in terms of permissions and the like.
7. Imbee.com – I don’t want an entire social network for my kids. Tell me they would not be distracted…
Ok there are others, but I am not sure they offer what I believe to be is the proper mix of teacher involvement and student freedom of expression. This post more than anything is designed to allow me to explain where I am in terms of student blogging. If I choose to do it next year it will be in the context of our Moodle installation.
What do you think?
AllanahK says:
We use Blogger as a student blogging tool with a class gmail email address.
Children in my primary school class have created their own blogging accounts using their home email address as a sign up and to moderate their comments. In this way their parents also have an idea of the sorts of comments that are being added and who is commenting.
We have hidden the problematic navigation NEXT BLOG button.
Primary School Blogger Blog
We also use Blogmeister as an individual blog for those not up to making their own Blogger blog. David Warlick runs it and he is very helpful in getting started. There is a very active forum of other Blogmeister users who can help get you started as well. I suggest you give David another email asking for school password. He may have missed it before.
19th June 2007 at 5:41 am
Mrs, Durff says:
Try Blogmeister again. David Warlick was probably just out on the convention circuit. We teachers love it and it is up and running! For kids, is is THE solution!
19th June 2007 at 9:15 am
Tim D says:
Hi Chris,
Thanks very much for the mention.
I wanted to let everyone know that we never designed imbee.com to be a teaching application…but as it turns out, imbee.com does lend itself well those who might be interested in bring secure new media into their classrooms.
We’re in the process of optimizing our site – and in our next release we’ll support pod casting and videos. Also we’re working on content partnerships with organizations like PBS, National Geographic Foundation, NPR program Pulse of the Planet and more. So we hope to provide a dynamic environment that offers not only unique content development tools but also excellent “smart” exclusive content.
In addition, if there are any teachers interested in receiving our activity guide -please feel free to email me at tim@imbee.com.
Best,
Tim D
Founder / VP marketing
imbee.com
19th June 2007 at 1:39 pm
Bill Fitzgerald says:
Hello, Chris,
DrupalEd can also be a walled garden — actually, you can create sub-walled gardens within the walled garden —
I’ll be glad to show you some of the pieces at NECC —
RE presenting about blogging: I wouldn’t recommend presenting on that anymore either. Present about teaching instead, and about supporting learning through interaction, and about teaching rhetorical context, and about presentation skills. Then show the tool that allows students to do that online.
Blog? What’s a blog?
Cheers,
Bill
19th June 2007 at 2:40 pm
Jane says:
I have heard that yomod.com is working on a solution for teachers to use for a daily journal.
19th June 2007 at 4:59 pm
Larry Ferlazzo says:
A few things:
* I appreciate the info and resources your share in your posts.
* You might want to included edublogs.org in your list of potential blogging sites/tools.
* I’ve found some easy ways to deal with we applications that require student email addresses. I’ve listed places where students can get temporary addresses here:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/05/18/temporary-student-email-addresses/
19th June 2007 at 12:51 pm