Tired of lugging around notebooks? Try student blogs instead!
Posted on Wed, Nov 07, 2012 @ 08:38 AM
We love reading our students’ journals—but honestly, we could do without the cumbersome, spiral-bound notebooks we lug back and forth from school every day. Our gut tells us that you feel the same, so leave the luggage for spring break and give student blogs a shot. It’s simple, free, paperless and we’re confident that your students will love it.
Kidblog
Kidblog gives you the ability to create a secure classroom blogging community, one that you are able to oversee and make public at your discretion. But it’s so much more than a student blog:
Create classroom discussions and have your students respond from home after they’ve carefully reflected on the topic; or have your students design an e-portfolio, one complete with their favorite YouTube videos, slideshows and audio clips. If that’s not enough to convince you, how about the fact that it’s cost-free, ad-free, email-free and that set-up time takes 25 seconds. Literally.
Edublogs
Like Kidblog, Edublogs allows you to create and manage student blogs and discussion forums. Your kids will love the fact that they can customize their blog by choosing from over 140 unique themes, widgets, colors and custom backgrounds.
Want to collaborate with other teachers? Add your blog to the Edublog directory and create a community. Want to limit your students’ web access, go ahead and block search engines. Sick of trying to keep passwords straight, quickly set a single password for your entire blog which you can give out to anyone you want. If 32 MB of storage is sufficient for you, membership is completely free. Need more storage? No problem. For a few dollars a month, you can always upgrade.
Although blogs have been around since the 90s, using blogging in the classroom is, relatively speaking, in its infancy. Nonetheless, educators are finding that student blogs can be an excellent tool to promote literacy and writing skills; blogging can also increase student involvement because it uses a medium students find engaging and comfortable. If you’d like to read more about student blogs, check out one of our recent articles, 5 reasons you should consider using blogging in the classroom.