More and more teachers and their students are getting into blogging. Blogs easily replace paper or email newsletters, and can be used by students to write and publish work.
With student-written blogs, teachers can read, edit, evaluate, and offer suggestions to improve student writing – all without ever touching a piece of paper. Another advantage of student blogs is that students can write and post anytime, not just during school or class time. Often students will get very involved in a discussion that takes place by commenting on teacher and peer posts.
Here are three popular blogging options for educators.
Blogmeister
Blogmeister is an education blogging site, that is a safe place for kids to visit to read and write blogs . The interface is unpolished and does not always work as expected. Teachers must have a school code before they can register and begin blogging.
Blogmeister is convenient for setting up student blogs under the supervision of a teacher. Comments and posts can be moderated so that they must be teacher-approved before they appear on the student blogs.
There is a good on-line documentation system but tech support is weak. If a help message is sent, it might get answered, it might not. The look and feel of a blog is limited to a handful of built-in templates, although there are places to upload images to give a more personalized appearance.
If the quirks are tolerable, Blogmeister is a good place to start with student blogging, because a teacher can manage any number of classes all from the same location. It's not the best place for a teacher-only blog.
Blogger
Anyone with a free Google account has immediate access to Blogger. Setup and posting is easy and the interface is uncluttered and intuitive.
Unlike Blogmeister, Blogger allows the choosing of a unique and interesting blog name that is included in the blog URL (e.g. coolteacher.blogspot.com). Only sixteen templates are offered when setting up a blog, but with the aid of some minor web coding skills, custom templates can be installed and tweaked to give highly personalized blogs.
Since a Blogger account is linked to an individual Google account, it isn't useful for managing student blogs. Students can set up their own Blogger accounts and then the teacher can read them, but that isn't convenient, and a teacher has no control over what students post.
Blogger is an excellent for an on-line newsletter, or to keep parents and students informed about classroom news. Students can write comments (moderated by the teacher) on teacher-generated blog posts, allowing for some student interactivity.
Edublogs
Edublogs is a full-featured site reserved for education. The free version inserts annoying ads into the content but the supporter upgrade is only about $4 a month if paid annually. A supporter upgrade provides 30 ad-free student blogs which can be managed by a single teacher. Students control their own blogs, but the teacher also has administrator access.
Edublogs uses the full-featured and widely used WordPress blogging engine. There are thousands of themes available as well as a number of gadgets and plug-ins to enhance functionality. Edublogs limits plug-ins to a select suite, so the options aren't quite as diverse as are available to a WordPress user hosting a blog through their own service provider.
Edublogs offers a satisfying experience for both students and teachers, although the learning curve is a bit greater than it is with Blogger or Blogmiester. Once mastered, any other blogging software is easy to learn and the user will be up to speed and ready to enter the professional world of blogging. Edublogs offers a great low-cost way to provide students with real 21st Century skills.
Choosing a Blogging System
Each of the these sites offers something to the educator looking to blog. Here are some recommendations:
- For an individual teacher blog (no students) use Blogger. It's free, will look good, and is easy to use.
- To include student blogs for a large number of students (several classes), Blogmiester is hard to beat for the cost (free).
- For a sharp looking teacher blog plus a single class of thirty students or less, EduBlogs is the way to go. It's well worth the small annual subscription to obtain the professional-level tools and blogging experience for the kids.
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