In last week's entry in The Jungle, I described some important
benefits of having students work with blogs. This week, I hope to add some
blogging options to every educator's arsenal. Teachers will have to choose
which approach best fits their own style and needs, of course, but hopefully
this will get you started.
The Free Ones
The most popular free blogs are hosted at Blogger and
WordPress. Each site offers free accounts, dozens of pre-created themes, and
lots of features that make the blogging experience very simple - even if you've never done anything more than
post a comment on a message board. The biggest issues with Blogger and
WordPress are that each blog is unique. This presents a few problems. In my case, I would have to get each student's
blog address cleared by the school filter. The tech director wasn't too excited
about this prospect, especially since there were about 130 addresses just for
me.
I would also have to visit each individual blog unless I
wanted students to just post comments in one class blog. But I wanted students
to have the ability to format their posts (which you usually can't do with comments)
and learn what constituted good online writing, while still having some moderation
control. Blogger and WordPress were also very difficult to lockdown because
students had independent blogs. This meant that unless I checked often,
students could open their blogs so that anyone with Web access could read their
material. With Internet predators a scourge on society, I was concerned about
that safety issue.
With these primary issues in mind, our school's tech
coordinator approached me about examining a free online community that had
blogs, but also so much more.
 An Online Community That Goes Beyond Mere Blogging
ePals.com has a lot to offer and thanks to plenty of
advertising (albeit via school appropriate sites such as National Geographic,
Horace Mann, and Discovery Channel), it is free to use.
This online community features an abundance of tools such as
forums, newsletters, on-site e-mail, and films, with focus areas and projects
listed that allow schools to connect on either a regional or topical-relevance
search. One of the site's greatest strengths is how it lets classrooms connect
with each other from all over the globe. ePals.com is dense, too, and provides lots
of options from which teachers of all disciplines can benefit.
From strictly a blog perspective, I was not very impressed
with the ePals blog product, SchoolBlog™. Users are forced to use the site's
format with no ability, at least that I could find, to change navigation
options. Uploading images and posting blogs caused things to run VERY slowly. To
rule out a connection-related problem, I even checked ePals.com from both work
and home. This concerns me since I did my testing in early August when I would
assume the site's traffic is at its lowest.
On the positive side, if you're just getting into blogging, there
isn't a lot you need to do to get going since the settings and personalization options
are seemingly limited. There are also options that allow you to have public
posts, posts for just students and parents, and posts for parents alone. This
feature has great potential in that you can add parent accounts as a special
designation, as well as administrators, other teachers, and professionals as
the educator seems fit. Blogger and WordPress don't offer this option, but
still allow for a private blog.
Related Readings
(please note that hyperlinks will not work until future blogs
are posted):
Part 1 – Student
Blogging Communities - Blogging About Blogging? (Part 1)
Part 2 – Student
Blogging Communities - Free Opportunities Are Out There (Part 2)
Part
3 – Student
Blogging Communities - Pay to Play (Part 3)
Resources:
http://en.wordpress.com/features/
http://www.blogger.com/features
http://www.epals.com/groups/about/pages/epals-overview.aspx
http://sites.epals.com/modyland/
http://www.classpress.com/img/students.jpg
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