How to Blog with Students

Wednesday, 02 September 2009 08:53 | Written by Ben Anderson |

That first step can be daunting. What's around the corner? How far down is that first step
really? What on earth have I signed up for? So, take a deep breathe, and keep reading to find out how to prepare for this big first step.

The Plan

Manners Please!

Just like your first day teaching (and the first day/week of subsequent years) you will need a plan. You need to write guidelines or rules for how students should "behave" online, and have lessons to explicitly teach them what your expectation are. To the degree possible, you should embed terms, and procedures from your regular classroom management. Never assume that they will know better, or that because they've been online, they understand, or because they worked on computers with another teacher, they were taught. Even if it's been covered, your better off re-covering the territory than skipping a lesson they may have missed. I liked to discuss it in terms in manners, and respect for each other. Browse the Cyber Safety section for more resources on preparing students to be online.

Your permanent digital record

You really need to make it clear to students that this is not like classroom work that is only seen by the teacher. To make it more complicated, you want to do this in a way that does not inhibit their writing or their voice. Moderation of all writing will help. Tell them to ask you if they think something may not be appropriate. If they write something that is not appropriate, I pull them back, and review the comment with them and ask them if that's what they want the public to know about them? I usually only have problems with students who are new to our school and our blogs. When I've called them up about comments, they have always agreed that the comment was not appropriate (even students who were pre-disposed to disagreeing with me in other situations), and when I asked them what they want me to do, they asked for it to be deleted. I do not belabor the point unless they repeat this behavior, and let it stand as a lesson.

Training wheels

At this point, I often have students do an analog (non-computer) activity to prepare them for the give-and-take of blogging. I hand out a post-it note to each student and ask them to answer a question: what they did last year, or over summer, what they like, what they are looking forward to, etc. I then collect the post-its. I remind them about manners and how to respond to other student's writing. I tell them I will be giving them someone else's post-it with their comment, and to comment on it. I ask them to say something positive, and if they have a criticism, to be explicit, not insulting, and constructive. I model what I expect, both appropriate and not appropriate so they can see what to do. I then pass out the post-its, and give them a blank post-it that's smaller and a different color and have them finish the activity. I group them together and post them on a board. I usually review them in subsequent sessions.

Structure of Blogging

Platform

In addition to preparing students, you will need to prepare your blog environment. There are a number of blogging platforms you can use. ClassBlogmeister is one of the older platforms available and is free, but a little dated looking, Edublogs.org is a newer entrant and has more features, but you will need to pay a nominal $50 a year fee to get full features. You can go with Blogger (free), but most school districts block those sites, although you can ask your district to unblock your specific blog(s). WordPress.com is the same software as you find in Edublogs, and like Blogger, is used by a wide-variety of folks. You can do an install of WordPress or WordPress Multi User if your into that as well. In the interest of disclosure, I use Edublogs extensively, but I know a number of well-established educational bloggers who use ClassBlogmeister and love it. I'll include some links for support for both platforms at the end of this article.

Administration

Do you want to have a single class blog, where you write the posts, and students comment, or do you want each of your students to have their own blog? Will you allow outsiders to comment? I will strongly suggest at the beginning that you moderate all comments and posts. Many districts, schools, and administrators will want you to moderate all content since it's not just your students' permanent record, but their record as well. You should probably plan to set aside a time when you will moderate posts/comments. You should also make a concerted effort to reply to their posts/comments in the beginning to get the ball rolling. You may also require that students comment on other students' posts or comments. Sometimes classes take to do this naturally, but that is not often the case. Think of Writer's Workshop, where you have to tell students that they will edit their peers' work, and explicitly instruct them in how to carry this out. It's the same with blog responses.

Draft or Final Versions

This is something that I didn't really think about when I started, but I think it's a good idea to have some ideas about this before you start. Will you approve first drafts of student writing, or will you hold them in moderation until they have edited their work? How will they get feedback from peers on editing if their writing is not "approved" and public (they'll need some limited editor privileges on the blog to see it)? How good is good enough? On the other hand, if you give them feedback on their first versions, what opportunity do they have to "fix" it? All the time you need to keep in mind that you want them doing their best, but you don't want them feeling inhibited about their writing. Only you will be able to balance all these considerations. I'm moving towards a system where I have a statement on the blogs that all student writing is in draft form unless we state it's a final version, and I have a little icon that I put on writing that has been reviewed and fixed by the student. This will help contextualize what's going on. I like the idea of their learning process being transparent. You may not be comfortable with that. Just make sure that your policies reflect your goals.