blogging with kiddos, part 2

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Welcome back to BigTime Literacy! Today's BigTime Blogging Challenge prompt is to write "This I Believe" posts, so if you'd like to go ahead with that, please do! I need to continue with my Blogging with Kids series. (Check out my first post in this series here.) Today I'm going to give you a tour through Edublogs and also share the Google + method you'll need to use if your students don't have their own email address.

Edublogs
I'm going to venture to uncharted water, friends! I bring you my very first screencast! I thought it would be much easier to talk and show the dashboard of Edublogs rather than writing about it. So, click the image below to go see the video (still working on embedding it; so many steps!)

How did I do? Super exciting stuff!

Creating User Accounts and the Google + Method
With edublogs, the students you create blogs for will need an email address. Perhaps they won't have one, but no fear! You can use the Google + method!

If you took a look at the video, you've already heard about how each child will need the following information for blog completion:

It might be possible that your students do not have email addresses, but you'll use a version of your gmail to get around this. Google email address work like this: you can use a + within the email address to use one email address for many accounts. In my case, my email address bigtimeliteracy@gmail.com is used to create all my student bloggers accounts.

You're going to add each child's user name to the email. For mine, I use a formula to keep things consistent. I like to use first name - last initial - and their "S" number (that our school uses for their ID.) So, one student might be, "mikem8721." I like having the child's first name in the user name so it's easy to know who is writing what when I'm reading blogs.

For the student's email, this is where you need google plus. Let's carry on with my sample student, Mike M. His "email" is going to be mine: bigtimeliteracy@gmail.com but I'm going to add the + and his user name:

bigtimeliteracy+mikem8721@gmail.com

What happens is that google is going to ignore everything after the plus, and his notifications will all go to my gmail. I get notified when comments are published on their pages. The comments still go to my students, too - I don't have it set up to moderate publishing of posts or comments. I know some teachers would like to see everything first, but in my world: ain't nobody got time for that! In the instance that something inappropriate goes though, I use it as a teaching moment with kids, and provide consequences as necessary.

Google + method is cool, right?

Make sure you take a look at the video for more details about the URL and blog name, too!

Alright! Well that's enough for today. I'll be back on Monday the 27th for a little bit more on getting the kids started on their first posts!

Get the details for this challenge here!

An InLinkz Link-up

a beginner's guide to blogging with students

I've been wanting to write about blogging with students for so long, I'm glad I'm finally getting around to it! Today's challenge prompt is to write a beginner's guide to something, and so I'm sharing blogging with kiddos. Unfortunately, this post was turning into a novel of mass proportions, so I'm going to break it down into a three part series:

1. Preparing for student bloggers and various platforms
2. Blog set-up and the Google + method (Saturday, July 18th)
3. Student beginnings (Monday, July 27th)

Preparations for Student Bloggers
I highly recommend that the teacher starts a blog. There are a few reasons for this:

The first reason is out of necessity. You'll need one main page to hub all the student blogs. Your students will save the teacher page in their bookmarks, and will easily be able to access all their peers' blogs. Before I was writing consistently here on BigTime Literacy, I created my own site with Edublogs - click here to see that page. You can find my former students' blogs down the right-hand side of the page. Also, as you can see on the center blog posting space, I used this page to post the Do-Nows for my students to work on when they entered the room. They'd get to class, head over to my blog, and find out what to do.

Tip: Student blogs could also be hubbed on a static page. In my case right now, I have a blogging club. I only have about 15-20 kids who blog in my club, so in this case, they are listed on my sidebar. However, if I were a middle school teacher with upwards of 80-100 students, I'd create a page in my navbar for Student Bloggers. They would all stay hubbed there, rather than on my sidebar. Having any more than 20 student blog links on the sidebar would definitely be way too much for your readers. I already feel like my sidebar is overwhelming!

The second reason you'll want your own blog is because ideally, you will be blogging alongside your students. I can't tell you how much knowledge I've gained as a writer from my blogging. If we are planning to provide demonstration and mini-lesson in a blogging unit, we need to be living that writerly life to help us determine what knowledge the students need! Here's a post from a teacher I follow sharing about how her teachers are taking this leap to bloggers!

Finally, you'll want to start a blog on the platform you intend to use to get comfortable with it. What platforms are there, exactly? I know of Blogger, obviously, but then there's WordPress, KidBlog, and Edublogs.

Student Blogger Platforms
Blogger and Kidblog and Edublogs, oh my!

If it were up to me, my kids would be blogging with blogger. It's what I use, it's what I know, it's what I'm comfortable with. But, I ran into problems because they were so young. With elementary kids, you'll want to use KidBlog (which I am not familiar with) or Edublogs (which is what my kids use!)

Edublogs is affiliated with Wordpress. Unfortunately I do not know Wordpress very well, so when I plan mini-lessons for kids, I have to take my time to figure things out. But, it's worth it and here's why:

Your kids will have so much choice with Edublogs. They can choose from more than 300 designs and templates for designing the look of their blog. They can play around with it and get it to look just how they'd like it. This choice will really engage your upper elementary kids! Additionally, kids need choice in their URL. The blogs you see attached to my old page were all done by formula: first name, last initial, hms dot edublogs dot org... like alexischms.edublogs.org. I made them, not the kids. I made the kids write blogs about books. Only books. There was no engagement in blogging with my former students - they didn't get to live blogging for what's so amazing about it! The choice in naming your very own blog! The choice in writing about anything you'd like! The response to pieces you chose to publish! How I wish I could go back and change all that!

What's also great about Edublogs is that (I'm pretty sure) when your students are older, they can convert their Edublog into a Wordpress blog if they'd like to keep writing!

So to recap with this first post of 3:

1. Classroom teacher should start a blog on platform of choice to...
• Hub student blogs,
• get used to writing and publishing posts (which will inform your insruction), and
• to get to know the platform.
2. Use Edublogs to offer choice - choice in design, layout, and also provide choice in URL.

I'll be back on Saturday with Part 2 of this series: Blog set-up and the Google + method. Make sure to follow me so you don't miss that post!

There's probably still lots that is not crossing my mind. Do you have questions about blogging with kids? Those would really help me to refine my upcoming posts if you'd like to leave them in comments!

Get the details for this challenge here!

An InLinkz Link-up