Kidblog.org

This is one of my favourite explorations in this inquiry.  I had been wanting to get my students blogging for quite some time but just hadn't dedicated the time to set it up or plan for its use.  I have also enjoyed demonstrating my own learning via a blog so I liked the idea of beginning the process of going paperless with my senior students in English 12.  In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms, Will Richardson (2010) says the best way to understand the potential for blogs as a teaching and learning tool is to become a blogger.  I began blogging for my course work in the fall of 2010 and then added a blog for my classes shortly after.  I had tried a personal blog but I have never been much of a diary/journal writer, so this quickly was forgotten.  The course blogs and blog for my classes however, were a huge epiphany for me.  I could not believe how they changed my learning and teaching.

In the blog for my classes I was able to keep students updated on what was happening in the class, provide PDFs of assignments and handouts, and also communicate with parents and others who may be interested in what is going on in my classes.  The biggest thing I realized was how much time my blog actually saved me.  It literally takes me 5 minutes each day to update the blog, but I no longer have to send homework to the office for absent students, photocopy missing worksheets, send emails to parents about what we are doing in class, or spend time in class filling absent students in on our class learning.  This information is all available on the blog!  I knew I wanted to have my students use this tool, and this inquiry made it possible to stop procrastinating.

I chose Kidblog.org, as I said in my inquiry proposal, because a friend was using it with much success.  As I have stated in my updates, I was confused as to why this site says it is perfect for elementary and middle school students.  I believe now that the reason for this is because the site creators do not think there is as much need for student safety concerns with teenagers, as there may be with younger students.

The best thing about this tool is how easy it was to set up.  I don't think it even took me a half hour to set up all my students in 2 classes.  Kidblog.org was created by someone with computer programming and classroom teaching experience, and it does seem that they understand the needs of classroom teachers. (Kidblog.org, 2011)  I was further pleased when I found that Kidblog.org was ranked as one of the top 25 sites of 2010 by Technology & Learning magazine. (Kapular, 2011)  For these reasons, I did not seriously explore another option for my student blogging.  I do use Blogger, obviously for this blog, and I use WordPress for my class blog so I feel I already know the ins and outs of those platforms.  I like that Kidblog.org works in a very similar fashion but that I was able to set up all the blogs for my students so they were ready to go without having to do any set up.

The home page for Kidblog.org is not cluttered or intimidating.

Once I signed up, it was easy to create my classes.  I appreciated that I did not have to provide an overwhelming amount of personal information, nor did I have to provide any information about my students other than a user name and password.  I chose to use my students' real names and assigned them passwords myself, which seems to have worked well.  My husband did this with his grade 6 class and chose to only use his students' first names, which seems to be common in elementary school blogging.

For "Role" the options include: student, administrator, teacher, moderator, guest.  This means that I can include people who can only observe the blog posts but not post themselves.  This would be great to include parents or a guest, like an author or colleague.

Once my classes were set up I had a separate "Home Page" for each class.  I was worried this would be inconvenient but I can easily navigate between the two classes via a drop down menu at the top of the page.

From this "Dashboard" I can easily see recent posts, recent comments, and navigate to settings or the actual class blogs.

My "Home Page" for each class contains a list of all the student blogs and their recent posts.  Each student or visitor to the site can also see this home page if they were to go to www.kidblog.org/English12C.  The difference between what my students and I see, and what a visitor sees occurs when they try to go to one of the blogs or read a post.

The titles of the posts are visible, but their content is not.  I chose to use this protected setting for my first trial of Kidblog.org but I can easily make the class blogs public by adjusting the settings on my dashboard.  I can also choose whether the classes can see each others' posts or if they can only see the posts of students in their actual class.  For this inquiry I kept the settings pretty tight but the students really wanted to read the posts from the opposite block so I may adjust this as we begin our discussions of The Crucible.  When blogging first became popular many schools feared for the safety of their students, as discussed by Barack (2005) in Schools Lower the Boom on Blogs.  Barack (2005) points out that student don't necessarily understand that data posted online can remain there, and could come back to "haunt" a student when applying for jobs. (Barack, 2005) Because I did not have to provide any information about the students and I could keep the class blogs private, I did not have to follow many of the safety tips suggested in Choosing Web 2.0 tools for Learning and Teaching... (Berger & Trexler, 2010, p. 175) However, if I move forward with using class blogs more intensely next year, I will provide information to parents via my course outline, and give them the option of being able to see what their child posts.  I have an incredibly responsible group of grade 12 students this year and was not concerned about inappropriate comments on their classmates' blogs.  There were a few of them who tried to be funny after our first posts, but when they realized they could not be anonymous they stayed focused on the discussion topics.

I was very impressed at how quickly the students adapted to blogging.  They seemed to really like the medium and I love that they were not afraid to experiment with the tools.  Many of them changed the colours of their fonts and few even added links and images.  Seeing the empty "Tag" boxes reminds me that I need to introduce the concept of tags and then include that in their future posts.

My blog looks the same as the students'.  I decided to also use this blog as a place to showcase some student work from a visual assignment so that those students could still have their work "posted on the wall."  It was exciting to see a couple of students use Prezi for their Visual Found Poems.

For the final writing assignment of our Kite Runner unit, I considered having them do their writing on their blogs.  I decided against this as I did not want them to be able to see each other's work.  The more casual reflective writing does not attract much attention to weaker students, but my fear was that with more formal writing expectations, the differences between the students would be magnified.  I cannot make certain blog posts visible to just me, and others visible to everyone.  Richtel (2012), in Term Paper Blogging, has me reconsidering this formal write I did at the end of the unit.  If, as I hope to do next year, student blogging becomes our form of writing, sharing, commenting and discussing, perhaps I won't need the formal "term paper" style write I usually do.  My only fear is that most post-secondary programs still require students to write formal papers and I want my students to be prepared.  I have found that in the blogging I do for my Diploma in Ed. program, I still retain the formal style and citation, but feel more comfortable to add an anecdote or emoticon, that I may not add in a formal essay. :D

One final element I want to add is a link back to this post and article.  I like the positive tone and I feel I have accomplished these 6 things with my class blogging.

After having explored Kidblog.org, I cannot see changing to another web 2.0 tool for class blogs.  If I were to use Blogger or WordPress it would not be as simple to set up the class or to monitor the posts.  I also would not have the security features that Kidblog offers.  I like that I can have my class set up for September so that the students can get to work right away.  This has been a positive inquiry experience.

References:

Barack, L. (2005). Schools Lower the Boom on Blogs. School Library Journal, 51(12), 24.

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a Digital World.
       Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited

Kapular, D. (2011). TOP 25 SITES OF 2010. Technology & Learning, 31(6), 16.

Kidblog.org (2011) About Kidblog. Retrieved from http://kidblog.org/about.php

Richtel, M. (2012, January 22). Term Paper Blogging. New York Times. p. 28.